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Weeks 13 & 14
My personal experience with this course has been quite different from every other MLIS class that I've taken so far (1 left after this!). I've learnt a lot and interacted with tools that I was largely unfamiliar with 14 weeks ago.
I was not a heavy user of social software tools before this course began. I had a facebook account and occasionally browsed through flickr, but other than that I was pretty new to the tools that we discovered over this term.
I now use an rss reader religiously, I check Bloglines at least 4-5 times a day (although 4 months ago I didn't even know what rss was). I will certainly be keeping up with the aggregator. The tiny orange rss icon is one of the first things that I look for now on new web pages that I visit.
In the last couple weeks I have decided to deactivate my facebook account, so that is another turn of events with my social software experience. I found that I wasn't really using it and I've suspended my account until I decide that I can't live without it. (It's been 2 weeks and counting and I haven't really missed it).
This course has been so practical because being on a co-op right now and seeing issues with social software and web 2.0 in real life has made the connection between what we've learnt in class and the "real" world. This course has given me a solid understanding of social software tools and I feel confident in my ability with social software now that I've completed this course.
The format of the class is perfect to try out and explore all of the tools through the case studies, group projects and readings. I don't think that I would have gotten as much out of this class if it had been live at FIMS. Although blogging could be a burden at times, it was nice to have the blogging holiday which gave me more control of my time.
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Katrina,
I like how you point out the practicality of this course. I completely agree. Especially with the group project and final project. For the final project, I am building a blog; its so neat to see the other side of this course, get a feel for blogging and that way, in an interview I am able to show proof of experience rather then just talking about how I learned about it or know what it is. I think it would be great to write your blog site on your resume or even just mention it in an interview to show the different skills you have. This is the one thing I realy enjoyed was how practical the course was!
Hi Katrina,
I also have to agree that the best part of this course was the fact that we got the chance to apply everything we learned about by actually using all of the social software tools we discussed. I think conducting a distance course in this way is the best possible forum, since the blog allows us to not only get our assignments, read the weekly readings, and submit our work, but to also discuss what we are learning about as if we were all actually together in the classroom.
Thanks for the post!