sociaLISe

The things you can “learn” from TFLN

“Awesome, the library of congress archived all tweets. Now my great great grandchildren can pinpoint the date they inherited alcoholism.”

(Having a bit of a crisis – this post will likely be updated in the coming days with more thoughts)

I think I’ve experimented with most of the tools we’ve talked about and they were all fairly easy to use. Except for my attempts at mashups with Yahoo! Pipes – that was just frustrating.

Oh wait, I have yet to tweet… I’m coming around though. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

—–

Distance ed has been do-able but not entirely enjoyable. My days are eaten up by working for the man and commuting* so I get about three to four hours a night to myself that I’ve invested in trying to get work done for the class. Some nights have been better than others but it’s been draining. Giant kudos to those who are juggling a lot more than I am and are still able to stay on top of things. Gold stars for you.

*I love Toronto but I can’t get over the fact that it takes me an hour to travel from one section of North York to another!

—–

The course material was most interesting for me when I was able to talk to someone else in the class about the readings and our ideas/thoughts/reactions. I understand the logic behind the blog posts and the commenting but for me blogging wasn’t able to compete with the experience of an actual conversation. Perhaps students could have the option of coordinating small chat groups instead of blogging to try and more actively engage with the readings. These chats could then be posted in a wiki or some forum where anyone else in the class could read and comment on the conversation topics. Posting the chats for the class to see would also act as quality control so that conversations remain (mostly) on topic. Just a thought…

—–

Summing up my experience? I’ve learned something new every week and that’s more than I can say for some of the other classes I’ve taken. So all in all, a thumbs up for LIS 9763.

Hi-fi Sci-fi Library

You’re welcome

Ps. The lyrics

What would I pack into a social media toolkit for libraries?

- A good definition of ‘social media’ (I’ve mentioned this course by title to a few library-type people and most reactions have been: “Oh, so, you’re learning about Facebook?”)

- Some sort of (online) activity workbook – along the lines of 23 things *

- Library 2.0 : a guide to participatory library service – I’m reading this right now (when I have the time) and it’s really accessible and not jargon-y so some people may find it useful… (I can’t vouch for this title but it seems like it’d be worth reading as well.)

- Links to some of our case studies as examples of libraries testing (or treading) the new waters. And examples of other corporations/organizations who are using 2.0 technologies effectively. I’d also want to include a few case studies about social media gone wrong because these serve as teachable moments.

* Here’s a (fictional) take on 23 things that my RA group came up with last term: RARARA