further consideration

Last Thursday, we all went to hear Peter Bromberg. Good food. Good information. And good times! What stood out to me as being most related to this project was his discussion of the increase in the pace of change. He stated that changes in information and information retrieval happen upon the invention of "disruptive technologies". Currently, these "disruptive technologies" are introduced more and more frequently which has caused our pace of change to increase rapidly. (Are we sprinting yet?) As a result, he feels we are in a state of "Permanent Beta" which means that programs, particularly those on the internet, rarely make it past the Beta release stage before a new "disruptive technology" comes along to change the flow. Because of this, Bromberg feels:

"We have to be in a continual state of learning."

Lifelong Learning! Of course! We, as information professionals need to keep current and know and understand these Beta programs. We must remain in a perpetual state of learning.

Because, as Bromberg went on to say, people are living with an over-abundance of information. They are drowning in it. And now our role is changing to that of a filter so that we can help people decipher between the different information. And what better way to help than to introduce tools. And what better tool may there be than the latest Beta?

taking a step back

Well, I'm at the end of my Learning 2.0 journey. I'd say this is a good time to take a step back and look at what I've learned, discovered and what new skills and tools I've picked up along the way.

1. I can now say that I have been (or possibly become?) a blogger. I found that it's a medium I don't necessarily need to resist. Instead, it's a tool I can use to match my projects. For example, I am using blogger to keep my final term project journal in my search class.

2. I'm not sure if I can live without my RSS reader. This is a tool I had known about but never really explored. Now, I read my feeds religiously - or, to be honest, semi religiously. Sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day. But, how great is it that, when there is, I can just go to one spot and tune in.

3-ish. I'd created a Delicious account before and had never used it. But after going back to it again, I did find a use or two for it. In fact, now that I'm in school again and not always on the same computer, I find that I use it to store urls from research I've done. That being said, as soon as I'm always on the same computer again, odds are I won't return to Delicious again. Sorry Delicious.

So there we are. Two and a half new tools. Not too shabby. But here's the thing. The web grows at an alarming rate. New web applications are popping up constantly. New technology hits the streets every second, or so it seems. That being said, this program, while recently established, already seems dated - or more importantly, not UPdated. Links aren't live or maintained. New applications aren't being explored. So, while the concept is still very pertinant, the packaging is a little...um...rumpled? In the interest of lifelong learning, perhaps the 23 things should be a little less static?

I know that I'm interested to see what my classmates think.