Final wrap up. My learning goals, part 1

My learning goals as I stated them in my very first blog post, and what I have discovered about them:

I wanted to be able to intelligently articulate what all these new terms mean, and learn how to use them:

Microblogging

A social form of communication where users can post brief digital content. 

Before exploring Twitter, I thought it was a waste of time until I tried it during week 2 of this course. Now I have slowly but surely become enamoured of its charms. By personalising it by choosing who to follow, I have customised my account to give me real-time updates and information from surprising corners of the globe. The limitation of 140 characters suits me, and makes sharing and receiving information extremely easy. 

Live tweeting during lectures is a skill I have yet to master, as it requires a good grasp of multi-tasking and an ability to condense information into a small concept that would prove interesting or useful in some way to my followers. 

Wikis

Software that lets any user edit and create content for the web. 

Open editing is an exciting concept, and I love the fact that wikis are able to be constantly changed and added to, which means technically they are never a finished piece of art!

RSS

I've seen it called Rich Site Summary OR Real Simple Syndication.

RSS is a syndication format for delivering new content from regularly updated sites on the web, and is read by feed readers such as Feedly or Bloglines. 

I have a Feedly account set up which I use weekly to keep up to date with blogs and my favourite websites. I find myself reading more content online now that I have this central location – it really has expanded the range of material I can explore on a daily basis.

It's a great discovery tool, and allows personalisation and the ability to save articles for reading later without missing anything important. 

User-generated content

A big component of Web 2.0, this is content that comes from the general public rather than only professional journalists or other 'experts'.

It opens up a whole new world of content and opinion, and is vital to understand for our profession as we seek to promote the cause of libraries and literacy in the future. We are the users!

The cloud

Cloud computing allows working with data over a network such as wifi or internet connection, including storage and file transfer. 

Working with Dropbox has been an incredibly useful experience, due to its functionality on multiple devices, ease of use, and its instant updating abilities. I have discovered that Google Docs is also extremely useful both for university group studies, and in a professional context.

But I do heed warnings not to be overly reliant on cloud-based services, because even though all my data is there, I don't actually own it – especially services like Dropbox that I don't pay for. My data could disappear overnight, and without adequate backups it could theoretically be gone forever. 

Social bookmarking

This allows internet users to add, share, edit, organise and search for bookmarks of web content, and has enabled the wonderful world of 'tagging' where useful terms are attached to the bookmarks – a shared vocabulary system.