More catch-up! Week 7: Wikis. I thought this was one of the more interesting units we’ve covered thus far. To be honest, I’ve always been a bit dubious about wikis; this despite the fact that I regularly use Wikipedia (thus outing myself as a bit of hypocrite!). The primary and obvious reason that I’m dubious is that old saying about one rotten apple spoiling a bunch: It only takes one or two cases of blatant cyber-vandalism to make you question the verity of everything included on a wiki site (any site, really, but the collaborative aspect of wikis obviously makes them especially susceptible to the more malevolent or mischievous people out there). That being said, having started – though not completing as of yet; sorry – the wiki activities, I can see that they could be a really effective way of people working together, because they make everything so quick: People from one organisation dotted all around the world can collaborate in near-real time. I think I’ve been persuaded, and will look forward to using wikis more in a workplace environment in the future. As for Week 8 (‘Mobile Technologies’), I know mobile technologies are obviously going to be the thing for the future (it’s about time to get my circa 1998 phone replaced, I think!), but I was just wondering if anyone out there actually thinks they’ll be of use to library services? I’m slightly sceptical.
Right, some more catch-up time (I can’t believe how difficult it is to be a student with weekly assignments again!). Looking back on Week 5: I must admit, I have a generally negative view of social networking sites. Without getting too heavy here, I think the more people get into and rely on sites like these, the more alarmingly atomised society will become. I mean, what ever happened to meeting up with friends in the park? Perhaps even more importantly, people like my mother have joined Facebook! I don’t necessarily want her, or pretty much anyone else for that matter, to know what I’m up to 24/7. It’s not like I’m murdering old ladies or anything, but what am I supposed to talk about with people when I actually meet up with them in person (or, in my mother’s case, call her at the weekend)? Which brings me to Twitter: At the risk of sounding snobbish, I can’t see how anyone except 12-year olds, narcissists, and/or people with an incredibly low attention span would want to be subjected to the avalanche of banality that must come their way via frequent ‘tweets’. Count me out! Anyhow, rant over. Week 6 (‘Multimedia’), on the other hand, was much more my style. Being a big, big fan of music, I’ve kept a watchful eye on all the digital music technology that has sprung up over the past several years. Long story short, I think it’s all great! There are so many ways to access, listen to, and store music now that the mind simply boggles. Moreover, sites like LastFM and (something that wasn’t mentioned) RateYourMusic have exposed me to so much great music that I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. The amount of great old stuff you can find on YouTube has made me a big fan of that, as well. So, social networking sites, yay; multimedia, nay!
Having fallen behind in recent weeks, I’ve done a blitz of the Week 2 and 3 materials. So…where to begin? RSS has always been a bit of a mystery up to this point, and, to be honest, I hadn’t been too keen to explore what it meant because a) no one I knew had really raved on and on about it (this as opposed to, say, Facebook) and b) I was put off by the name: ‘RSS’? (I’m allergic to acronyms.) When I started to read what RSS was actually all about, though, I soon discovered that it was really handy. One of the problems with the Web is that there’s so much out there and it’s difficult to keep track of the ‘highlights’ of sites that are handy or personal favourites. Something like Google Reader, though, makes this process really easy.
I’ve set up feeds from a number of my most-visited sites (The Onion, Arts and Letters Daily, Smashing Telly – which is a great place to find interesting/obscure videos online, if you haven’t heard of it), and now I just sit back and let the ‘goodies’ roll in. Brilliant! I haven’t had the chance to set up a personalised homepage yet, but judging by Rebecca White’s devotion to iGoogle (she’s doubtless feeding the virtual fish in the virtual aquarium on her iGoogle page right now), I think I should at least have a look.
I’m slightly more dubious about the Week 3 topic of social bookmarking. While I’ve used Flickr and think it’s quite useful for sharing digital photos, as a librarian I just can’t see how the whole idea of ‘folksonomies’ will ever really, satisfactorily work on a grand scale. Surely rules, constraints and (dare I say it) limitations are essential to accurately describe the depth and breadth of what’s ‘out there’. Aren’t folksonomies just the first step to descriptive chaos? Or am I being uptight? Comments are welcome…
Well, here it is; my first blog entry. So…What do I think of blogs? Well, I don’t frequent them too often, to be honest. I think I’m still very much an ‘analog’ person when it comes to getting news and comment, though I love the Onion News website and check that out whenever I get the chance.
In terms of blogging for work: I haven’t really decided whether blogging is an entirely worthwhile workplace venture yet. If you’re pulling in people with blogs who you wouldn’t otherwise reach, I think that’s fair enough, but it seems to me that a website can accomplish this goal just as easily, and there’s no sense wasting time just to be ‘cutting edge’. I might be mistaken in this regard, but I see blogs as more of a medium for personal expression.
With regard to Learning 2.0 thus far: I think it’s shaping up to be a very interesting course!
