What a journey!

This assignment is one that I could sink my teeth into.  It represents hands on learning, which is the way I learn best.  Give me what I need and let me run with it.  The beauty is that there were really no right or wrong answers to this assignment.  Every one's reflections and thoughts are their own and I'm sure there were a wide variety of opinions about different exercises.

I especially liked the exercises on finding podcasts and rollyo.  The use of podcasts is fairly new for me and I was exposed to the vast amounts of information to be explored through podcasts and how to find it.  Rollyo is something I had never heard of, but that has such promise in a school setting.  I can envision using Rollyo with students and teachers.  Additionally, I was have a deeper understanding of things I was already familiar with.  For example, I have had a blog in the past, but never knew how to embed a photo or video.

I was surprised to find that a few of these exercises frustrated me or felt worthless.  I will probably never use zotero.  I found it so hard to use and I did not get a clear understanding of how it would benefit me, therefore not finding much value.

For me this assignment does not end here.  We were exposed to so many ways to gather information, but could only scratch the surface in this assignment.  I will go back and search for podcasts, follow more blogs on my google reader, and discover more award winning web 2.0 sites.

I do have one suggestion for improving this assignment.  Web 2.0 tools can be used in so many creative ways.  Unfortunately, I am not super creative and tend to profit from others' creativity.  We were asked to reflect on ways these applications could be used in a library setting, but unless we read everyone's blog posts, those ideas were not shared.  I think it would be helpful to share these ideas in some way.

I leave this assignment with a quote from Dave Barry, but I cannot verify if it is truth (but if it is, maybe it should be included as the 24th thing)

"One day soon the Gillette company will announce the development of a razor that, thanks to a computer microchip, can actually travel ahead in time and shave beard hairs that don't even exist yet."