In my introductory post, I quite briefly stated my learning goals:
"I hope to further develop my technical skills through blogging, collaborate and communicate online with my group and other classmates, and document my experiences using new media. I am excited about trying new forms of documentation and communication, such as twitter. I have a twitter account, but have never tweeted"
In hindsight, I think I could probably have structured my goals a bit better and been a lot more clear on exactly what I wanted to achieve, but I can expand a bit on this in reflecting on my progress.
Blogging: I started out fine, but struggled a little towards the end with keeping up, especially as the investigations got increasingly complicated and technical. However, having previously had a blog, and only posted three times over 8 months before abandoning it, I am proud of the amount I have managed to write and post. I have developed my technical skills for blogging further through adding gadgets such as the #isys1166 twitter stream to the side bar on my blog, and using html to fix formatting problems and embed images and maps.
Collaborating and Communicating: our group has been enthusiastic and supportive of each other, and not only have we been commenting on each others blogs and collaborating on a document, we have also looked outside our small group and interacted with the rest of the class via twitter, yammer and in some cases facebook. The use of social media in this class makes me feel more connected to classmates, commiserating over our struggles with the topic and enjoying “lightbulb moments”, such as when we discovered how to add our twitter feed to the sidebar of our blogs, and then shared it on twitter.
Trying new forms of documentation and communication: Well, I have certainly been tweeting over the last 6 weeks, at the time of writing was at a very respectable 84 tweets- well up from 0! I particularly enjoyed this aspect of the project, using the hashtag #isys1166 to see what others were tweeting and making new connections with classmates and beyond. One particular thing I found really good about using twitter to livetweet our lectures was the ability to interact with classmates during the lecture, but without disturbing the class. If someone was confused by an acronym, others could reply to the tweet to explain. Those that were missing the lecture could check up on twitter to see the main points before listening to the recording. I found that using my phone to tweet took too long, and was therefore distracting, but on my laptop I can type fast enough to keep up with the lecture. By extracting the ‘essence’ of the lectures in the form of tweets, I find I retain a lot more information that if I had just been listening or making traditional notes on a printout of the lecture slides. I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but it really worked for me, and I think I might keep it up!
I was surprised by how much I already knew in some areas, such as Google Maps, and how I have already integrated that into my daily life. I want to explore further the applications in information management, using maps to collect information into a usable, searchable format.
Now that I have been using Twitter, and tried Diigo and Delicious, I am more familiar with the concept of non-hierarchical classification, using tags instead of folders to organise information. Although I had used Flickr for a long time to store and organise my photo library, following this class I am inspired to go back and add tags so that I can more easily search for a photo I want. This has prompted a new way of thinking for me regarding how I manage information in my personal life.
I think my increased understanding of technology will lead to me being more open and confident about using it professionally. I have already been able to apply some of what I have learnt in the workplace, increasing my use of html instead of WYSIWYG editor and paying closer attention to how social media apps like twitter and facebook are used by my colleagues as marketing tools. This has also made me reflect on how information management is present in almost every workplace, and that skills I am learning now will be transferable should I wish to veer from my current career path.
I feel that I have achieved my goals, and hope to continue learning further, especially with regards to the more technical things such as mash-ups and html. My new goals are to eventually master html and move on to xml, as I feel that it is important to fully understand 'how things work' so that I can have an increased level of creativity online.
In terms of information management, I am now more invested in the idea of "The architecture of participation" which John discussed in the April 7 lecture, and want to be more conscious of contributing as well as using resources such as Wikipedia and Trove.
The use of online tools to collaborate, participate and create new information is something I want to explore further, particularly in how it relates to libraries. In particular, I am really interested in concepts such as "Idea Box", which is a mash-up of the physical gallery space, library, and new technology to increase community participation in a fun and meaningful way.
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