Thoughts on Social Software Tools

Blogging

Since I had some experience working with blogger before beginning this course, I decided to go with that for sake of ease. However, in discovering the different tools available, I might prefer something different. My experiences with blogger have been great, except that I really wish that I could classify my blog posts into categories (like you can do with Wordpress). Perhaps it’s the latent cataloguer in me...on second thought, I doubt it. If I was willing to fork out a little cash, I might be interested in using one of the software that you pay for just to get a bit more freedom with customization and functionality. For my own purposes, I can’t see this happening any time soon, but if I was to be responsible for implementing a blog for a job, I would definitely research all my options.

I do think that I will continue to participate and contribute to the blogsophere. I am looking forward to having a bit more freedom about what I blog about and when I blog. However, I think that I will be taking a bit of a hiatus from my computer in general during the next three weeks or so...

RSS

Once again, I had been using bloglines for several months before starting this course and for convenience (I didn’t want to have to re-subscribe to several feeds), I decided to maintain that account for this course. For the most part I’ve been happy with bloglines until the last month or so. There was about a three week period where that little plumber guy was popping up a bit too frequently for my liking. I’ve also been frustrated that bloglines has been giving me many repeat items for some feeds (in some cases 20 at a time!) and been terribly slow in displaying other items. Several weeks ago my blogpost for the week did not appear on bloglines until more than a week after I had posted it. A blogger that I follow has suggested Google Reader so I might be inclined to give that a try.

I do have to report an excellent experience with feedyes. I’ve created feeds for 4 or 5 jobsearching websites that do not currently offer feeds (which seems nonsensical for a jobsite to me). For the most part, they’ve worked very well for the duration of the term. During the three week “blogline issue period,” they were a bit problematic, but I think that was more of a problem with bloglines than feedyes, since they’re not back and running like clockwork. My one frustration with feedyes has been getting the feeds to display in a “pretty” format, but I probably just need to play with it a bit more. Certainly my most recent created feeds look better than the first ones.

Wiki

I’ve used pbwiki to create wikis in the past for personal, professional and academic collaboration, so I’m fairly comfortable with its interface and syntax. In the past few months they’ve made some changes that have made it even more wysiwyg, so that’s great. Once again, I was frustrated by the fact that pbwiki makes you pay more money before you can too much customization to the appearance of your page. As I’ve mentioned before, I like the look of Mediawiki, and if I was going to implement a more professional wiki, I would definitely explore that option further.

Social Bookmarking

I have to say that I quite like Del.icio.us. I had no experience with social bookmarking before this course. I really had very little idea of what it even was. But I really like the idea of being able to collocate my favourite and relevant sites under one handy dandy little tag that I’ve created myself. Of the social software that we’ve looked at and that I had never before used, this is the one that I will definitely continue to use in the future.

I certainly like the idea Flickr. It just apply too much to my life at present since I don’t have a digital camera and therefore have very little to do with digital pictures. However, I have to admit that I’ve used it several times this term to see what kinds of pictures people are taking about topics that interest me. I will probably re-visit Flickr when I get a little more “in line with the times” and buy a digital camera.

Online Social Networks

It was nice to see what “the fuss is all about” with Facebook and Myspace, particularly since I’ve had students in the past who were terribly enthused about them. But I fear that my accounts in both will be left to fend for themselves. I’m just not terribly interested; I’ll be honest. As far as their functionality and “user-friendliness,” I found Facebook a bit more intuitive to use than Myspace.

IM

Alright, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve never be a personal IMer. However, I do see the benefits of IM in the library context and so for that reason, I’ve made an attempt to look at it objectively. I find MSN Messenger easy to use and since it is fairly ubiquitous, I don’t think that libraries would have too much difficulty using this platform for their IM services. However, options like Meebo make it even more seemless for the user, so why not?

My Thoughts on Blogging as an Educational Tool

Overall, I feel that the experience with blogging as an educational tool has been effective. While at times it seemed quite strenuous, that’s more a result of our intensive program than the program with blogging as teaching method. I do feel that I’ve learned more in this course than any of my other courses in the MLIS program; when I really think about it, most of that learning happened through readings and “discussion” with classmates. I suppose that’s the point of teaching through blogging. It’s active learning in the online environment.

However, I think that the success of blogging as an educational tool depends on the teacher’s organization of the course and willingness to take a “facilitating” role rather than a “socratic” one. Amanda did a great job of doing this! Secondly, the success of a course structured like this depends on the active involvement of the students. This means first that students must participate by doing the assigned readings. This ensures that they have something to talk about. Next, class mates must be willing to frequently “participate” in the discussion through commenting on each other blogs. Even if everyone has done the readings and has great ideas, it’s all for nought if they’re not willing to “hash” it out with their colleagues.