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.

down with rss

So, being a google girl living in a google world, I chose to use google reader for my rss feeds. Really, the only reason I have is that I think I'll be much more likely to read them if I don't need to sign into another program just to access them. It's all about convenience. And boy has it been convenient. This week I set up quite a few rss feeds. I chose to go for a wide variety of topics. Some are library related, some are current event/entertainment related (I still need to be able to talk to my non-library friends), and, as this is a tech class after all, some are technology related.

Now, I say that I set them up, but what good is an rss feed reader if you don't actually READ what comes in? Well, I'm proud to say that, as of this week at least, I have actually been keeping up with them. I think it all feeds into that convenience thing again. It's there, everything comes in, I check my email, and I check my rss feeds. Sweet! Right? Here's hoping it doesn't go the way of my stack of unread Entertainment Weekly's. Boy was I great about reading those at first. But, I remain optimistic. Because, from the tech site (Gizmodo) alone, I have gained some real nuggets of information. I mean, how cool is it that I was able to beat my techie boyfriend to the punch and tell him about the new robot theme park being built in Korea: Robot Land! And, check this out - you can get internet security built into your router.

How cool and tech-knowing am I?

Speaking of...This Pecha Kucha thing. I'll be honest, I've sat through some intensely long Power Point (and OmniGaffle) presentation. They seemed to last days, but to be fair, it was really only hours. So I appreciate the brevity Pecha Kucha affords. And still, I think there is a major flaw in this plan. When can people ask questions? How do you learn more from the presenter? Isn't that a big part of any presentation? Not to be a hater - but I just thought I'd throw that out there. What does everyone else think?