Final wrap up. My learning goals, part 2

I wanted to find out what the heck maps and mashups are.

So much easier than I had expected! Maps I use everyday to navigate, and the exercises in class making our own map and expanding knowledge of what maps can do was very useful. 

I love the idea of mashups combining data from one or more sources to create a new usage or function. There are some extremely innovative mashup projects being created such as the Doc2Cloud mashup I found, and I hope to explore more of these as my studies continue.



I wanted to be at the cutting edge of all this technology so that professional I feel confident as a user, and possibly even become able to teach others to use it to their advantage.

I'm not sure what I was expecting after a mere five weeks, but as yet I don't feel like I'm at the 'cutting edge'. I have, however, vastly and quickly expanded my knowledge and skills. 

I will remain an active tweeter with a professional focus. I am confident at posting and maintaining a blog, and I now use wikis for information gathering, the cloud for storage, and social bookmarking to collate my internet surfing into a personal organised database. 

I am proud to say I was able to teach someone how to set up and use a Twitter account this week! An avowed Twitter-hater was complaining to me it was all just noise and ridiculous sound bites, so I showed him my account which is set up to follow libraries, librarians, scholars and many professional organisations. I explained that over the last month I have found it an invaluable source of up-to-date developments, and prompted the Twitter-hater to do the same. Success! This is a direct result of my studies in Document Management 1, and I am proud of my learning progress.

I think Twitter is fantastic because it allows me to become aware of trends, issues and developments in the information management world on a global scale, and it is also a great networking tool.

I have to admit the workload for this course was hard, but not insurmountable. The learning curve for me was perhaps harder because most of the content and tools were new to me, and I had to set aside extra time for further reading and reflection so I fully understood what I was trying to achieve. 

It's really been quite challenging to be exploring new programs and interfaces at such a fast pace, but what it has done for me is make me less wary of trying new things, and realising that the pattern behind good software and Web 2.0 tools is essentially similar – usually user-friendly and easy to implement for many different uses and purposes.

My CCC Tag Cloud

Having these small, week-by-week exercises exploring various technologies has been absolutely invaluable for my continued development as an information professional.

The buddy system was a good one, as the encouragement to comment on each other's blogs was a good process both for seeing how others approached the material and to request help and provide a space for discussion. 

New goals for me in the future are to continue to use the web technology tools that worked for me in a professional and personal context, and to be aware of the ones that don't work so well for me, so I am at least across what is available even if I don't use them as much.

As a future information professional, I now realise it is absolutely essential to have a working knowledge of web tools that enable creation, collaboration and communication. 

This little hamster has taken many steps in pursuit of technological mastery!