Item #22: Wrap up

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I really appreciate having a much better understanding of many of the tools and applications explored through this training adventure. I will continue to use some more than others, but at least I have a base understanding so when someone mentions an 'rss feed', I'll know to what they refer. I will definitely be using the goodreads.com for reader's advisory type purposes and hope to pull more of my yaab teens into the fold.

• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals

Well, as mentioned above, I'm no longer in the dark about much of the technology which I've been happily avoiding until now. I'm also more prepared to utilize these application in my work habits, as we migrate to more and more of them; wikis, feeds, videos etc...

• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I find it very interesting from a sociological point of view that people are reaching out more and more to each other electronically. We expect more immediate gratification and instant recognition for our presence in the world, through blogging, microblogging, IM, etc. Why do my friends in other parts of the country or world need to know that I'm late today? Why do they need to know that I'm doing my laundry or whatever... It's all becoming more "Look at Me, I matter, Look at me!!!!" And sometimes people are looking that you'd rather not.

Also, it's very quickly apparent that as our society becomes more electronic, the people without access to technology will be at a severe disadvantage. Will my daughters be required to watch podcasts, access sites, or participate in online discussions as part of their homework for high school? For college? Both girls at the same time? probably. How will I be able to financially afford all the upgrades and other devices needed to compete? Will they each need a computer/phone/ipod etc... in order to keep up with their educators? How am I going to be able to afford any of this? I pay $35/year (yes, a year) for my slow dial-up connection, and we're lucky to have it at all. If it ever goes up, it will be gone, as I can't afford more. Low-income people will continue to fall more and more behind as technology soars unless we can level the playing field somehow. It doesn't matter how hard they study, if I can't afford to buy the powerpoint program for our computer needed to submit their projects. How will the public school system respond to this? How will society? Technology can bring people together, but it also divides a large group of people out.

• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I think that it was an interesting idea for a training program. However there were parts that I found to be quite frustrating, and were it not for a co-worker helping through parts of it, I wouldn't have been able to figure out certain things at all. As an auditory learner, I knew that reading all the tutorials/articles would be almost as bad as reading a manual, and much of it was. The videos were frustrating to watch as they were so dis-jointed and slow, but the information from them was useful. I think that requiring people to play with everything is very important, but some of it could possibly have been done in classroom setting in addition to the independent part.

Thank you for designing the program. I know that quite a lot of time and effort went in to deciding the applications to highlight, and I appreciate the opportunity to know more about them all.

Miss Holly is signing out.

Item #21: Alternative Blogging

I think that people must have a lot of time on their hands to be able to use the twitter or tumblr sites. I certainly don't have time to stop and update a website with every little thing that I'm doing throughout the day; nor do I think that anyone would really care. However, there could be applications for this kind of updating within a branch, department or even throughout the library system. We would always know where people were, or where they are going if we were trying to find someone, as long as everyone remembered to take the time to update. We could also use it to instantly open up reference question assistance to other staff onsite or offsite, but only if someone were monitoring it.

Item 21: Video Sharing

I have found watching videos online to be one of the most frustrating experiences ever. They take forever to open, and then you can only watch a few seconds at a time, wait 20-30 seconds, watch 2 more seconds of the video then wait again. It takes 15 minutes to watch a 2 minute video. And this is using the 'high-speed' connection here at work. I have very little patience for this ridiculous situation. Until this issue is resolved, I find online videos to be mostly useless... and this includes the majority of the videos to which I've been directed by this whole 2.0 training process.

However, I do know that uTube is referenced to me by teens daily, and when I had them watching the video for our RobotDance at our YAAB meeting, they played around on uTube for quite some time sharing their favorite finds with each other. It quickly got rather inappropriate, and had to be redirected.

Item 20: Podcasts

I surfed around in all of the podcasting directories, and discovered that for the most part, I was blocked from seeing anything without downloading some kind of support software. Since I'm not supposed to be downloading anything to this shared work computer, I didn't get very far.

However, I can see that there are several legitimate kinds of offerings, as well as, shall I say, 'other' kinds of visual eye-candy out there. I know that it's the wave of the future for educators, so it's been good to know more about them. I didn't know that these directories existed. Someday I'll download iTunes onto my home computer (with the dialup connection it'll take about 20 hours... bleh.)

The interesting thing is that anyone can produce anything, and load it up onto these sites. I only have a superficial overview, but it seems like possibly no one is keeping track of the content, quality or anything, really. Sometimes, this is good... sometimes, not so very.

Item 19: Audio/Music

I found the music networking sites to be very interesting; similiar to goodreads.com but for music. The interesting part is that you seem to be able to purchase music there directly for downloads to your computer.

I looked at the other audio archiving sites, and I think they are very ambitious. I loved the sound effects site! It was rather amusing. I know that ebooks are becoming more popular, but I still don't think that the standard book format is going to go away soon; at least not in next 50 years. You just can't snuggle up with a 'good screen'.

I love the idea of language learning online however. Languages can be very tricky to learn on your own, and Mango seems to be a cool way for someone with a computer to be able to brush up their skills or learn at your own speed.

Item #18: Google Docs

I posted from Google Docs to the blog, but now I can't access it through Blogger to edit, so I'm not sure that it's the best way to handle blogging, but otherwise I really like the Google Docs application.

I've been playing around with the Google Docs application today, and I think it's pretty nifty.

I like that it feels very similiar to MS Word so that I don't need to flutz around in it to figure out what I'm trying to do. I also like it because I can have access to projects from home or work without having to email them to myself at my various accounts. This is pretty cool.

I like that I can keep things private or share with a select few, or more should I choose as well.