Reflections

What a learning experience this was! I learned to create a course in WebCT (I will be taking the class that teaches how to that this summer). I actually put everything I learned about facilitating an online course to the test. Overall I think I would have received a B for facilitation and maybe a B-- for design.

What did I learn from all of this and what will I do differently? A lot of what I learned and what I will do differently are tied together. I learned what can happen if you don't stress netiquette at the beginning of the course and will start every course with reading and a quiz on netiquette. I learned that people get upset when they miss the first week and can't catch up. So from now on, no late arrivals. Mainly I learned that I need to tweak the weekly lessons. So between now and June I will be making some changes to the course.

What will I remember the most from this course? The looks on their faces when they would tell me how proud they were that they accomplished the task for the week. The pride in their voices when they spoke of their accomplishments (because several of them didn't think they would be able complete the tasks). How several of them took what they learned and ran with it, one especially comes to mind: Pam's Genealogy Blog. I am proud of all of them.

Was it all fun and games? NO!!! Was it worth it? YES!!!! Will I be doing it again? Yes, starting in June.

See you in June!!!!!

Weeks 8, 9 and 10

A lot of time has elapsed and I am finally catching up. At the same time I was teaching this course I was taking an online course. To read about my experience in the Certificate in Online Teaching go to: http://thoughtsonline-roseypenguin.blogspot.com/ Now on with the course:

Week 8 was social networking where we covered MySpace and Facebook. The general consensus was that everyone seemed to prefer Facebook over MySpace. Facebook does seem to be older and more professional. Now that is not to say that you will not find teenagers on Facebook. As a matter of fact 4 of my friends are teenagers. As soon as I had added my nephew, two of his friends added me as well. The week we were studying social networking, MySpace was in the news (again!). We had a really good discussion on safety differences between the two with people posting links to articles about safety and tragedies. It was one of the better weeks.

Week 9 was podcasting and YouTube. We listed resources for them to go and listen to podcasts and then asked them to find library related videos to share. Some of the videos were a little off the mark, but hey, they tried. I created a podcast to show them how easy it was, I was hoping someone else would give it a try. But nobody was up to the challenge. It was a looooong week.

Week 10 was Second Life and a party. Yeah!!! All they had to do was sum up their experience and read about Second Life. They were not required to actually go create an account in Second Life. A couple of people did and last I heard they were having fun. The demonstration of Second Life hit a few snags. (It work perfectly during the dry run). I couldn't get Second Life to run, it took me about 20 minutes so I kept a running dialog and took questions. Then Sarah got stuck in a sitting position and couldn't stand up, wish I had taken pictures. We toured the Statue of Liberty, took a ferry ride (Sarah fell through the boat), visited the Sistine Chapel, and Information Island to see the libraries. Then it was on to pizza. Yeah!!!

Week 7: Wikis

This week is all about wikis and so we set up a FAQ Wiki for the GSU Library. We are going to explore collaborative group work. Our wiki has a page for each of the departments in the library and the idea is to post commonly asked questions along with the answers. The beauty of a wiki is that one person can post the question and someone else can come in and supply the answer.



There is also a good discussion going about the authenticity of the entries in wikis. The fact that some wikis allow anyone to edit with checking the facts raises flags. We are discussing the different ways of limiting who edits the wikis. There are passwords, locking the wiki, and the discussion is continuing.

Week 5: Play Week (Image Generators, Rollyo, and LibraryThing

Can you believe it? Week 5 already. This week are playing with Image Generators, Rollyo and LibraryThing. Let me start off with LibraryThing, I have just started adding my books and I don't see the attraction. Maybe I will change my mind after I have added a few more books.

The image generators are fun, here are a couple of images I created:
I used the fortune cookie generator to create my own fortune cookie.

I used LunaPic to alter a digital photo. I can see libraries using image generators to create images for signs or displays.

I create a search roll in Rollyo on the topic of plagiarism that is located on the side of the blog. I can see libraries (especially public) using this to create search rolls for online dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.

Week 4 - Bloglines and RSS Feeds

Week four was all about Bloglines and RSS Feeds. We had everyone sign up for Bloglines and subscribe to at least two RSS Feeds. I have been using Bloglines for several years and I subscribe to 123 feeds. Many of them are library related, a few fun blogs, comic strips and blogs from this class as well as blogs from the online course I am taking. The best part of using Bloglines is that the feeds are there, ready and waiting for me to read them. I don't have to worry about missing anything.

I see great potential for RSS Feeds in Libraries, they could be used for new books, changes on subject area pages as well as what's happening in the library.

Next week: del.icio.us, tagging and Technorati

Playing with Flickr

I was trying out some of the Flickr applications and liked PictoBrowser Builder the best. I had found a different one that looked promising, but unfortunately I don't understand French. I will use Flickr for photos for now (but I will continue to save my photos elsewhere too). And I definitely won't put pictures of my young nephews up, unless I make them private and even then I am not sure if I will. I might put them, make them private for a short period of time and then delete them after my family has had a chance to look and download/print the photos they want.

Here is my slide show using PictoBrowser:





Here is the link if you want to try it yourself:

http://www.db798.com/work/

In order to start creating your slide show, click on the word pictobrowser which is located in the bottom right corner off the slide show.

Week 2 - Blogging

Week 2 has officially been wrapped up and all the blogs look fantastic. There were a few small glitches, such as I forgot to fill in the calendar for that week. No one knew when the posts were due which caused some confusion; I checked the calendar to make sure I didn't do the same thing for Week 3. I did, so I added it right then and there. Sarah and I noticed that the checklist seemed confusing so we are trying a new format, we'll see if it works. There were also problems with the adding the links in WebCT, so I did a quick tutorial using Captivate and that seemed to help.

Next week we will be exploring Flickr and how it might be used by libraries. I am hoping that some will share their photos.

Week One Wrap Up

Week One was an interesting week, there were technical issues (I would type a message only to have it disappear the minute I hit save) and some confusion over start dates and posting. Things worked as the week progressed, people got more comfortable with posting and we explained why some people had started post before the official start date (they were excited and eager to start).

We (Sarah and I) also realized that we needed to take a fresh look at next weeks lesson. We will be constantly tweaking things and making changes as the course continues (this is a learning experience for us as well as everyone else in the course). We will be learning what works and what doesn't, so please have patience.

Class Has Officially Started

Well class officially started today, unofficially it started last Thursday. More than half the class have already logged in and started posting (with only a few minor glitches). Everyone seems excited and interested in learning new things.

Welcome to GSU's Web 2.0 Learning Experience

The staff of Governors State University Library will spend the next ten weeks learning about Web 2.0 and it's impact on Libraries. We will be exploring blogs, wikis, Flickr, tagging and much, much more. We hope that everyone will have as much fun learning about Web 2.0 as we had creating the course.