Week 10 - Summary

Libraries have to get involve in Learning 2.0 because of the huge impact on education. Teachers want students to be empowered and the web creates learning opportunities.

Blogs provide teachers with a communication tool to use to update student data, assign tasks, receive commentaries, and answer questions posted by students. Podcasts provide teachers with a fun digital learning tool. Many students are familiar with video learning so they participate because it interests them.

Media sharing sites such as Flickr help teachers with a resource to add images to their training presentations. Tagging makes it easier to search for relevant information. All the Web 2.0 tools are great teaching tools and library staff have to become familiar with these tools so they can help patrons to increase their skill level.

HCPL is already using many of the Web 2.0 tools, including blogging, tagging, eAudio book download and video downloading. Now I will answer the questions posed at the end of this program.

Q: What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
A: Week 3: For me Flickr was the most interesting and varied tool because there were so many options available.

Q: How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
A: The program has not really changed my lifelong learning goal because I have a job that encourages learning or get left behind.

Q: Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
A: No unexpected outcomes for me just a pleasure rush, but I was surprised by the total participants of the program.

Q: What ideas do you have for using these technologies at Harris County Public Library?
A: The technologies must be used as educational tools for our staff and our public.
Our library should use the tools to promote the library, our website and gather customer suggestions for improvements

Q: What else do you want to learn about? What other web 2.0 applications are you interested in?
A: I wish I could see into the future to know what is out there, but I want to learn all that is available.
-Flickr tools to create inventive banners/posters, etc.
-Screencasting Screencast (A great presentation tool)
-Network blog sites to promote customer interaction.
-WIFI security. WEP or WPA what serves the library best?
-Games for the gamers. The following sites are great gaming sources:
Freeciv , and Freecol .

Colorcop offers a cool tool for capturing colours anywhere on your screen. CDBurnerXP offers free software to burn CDs with Windows XP. 7-Zip offers a free WinZip-like software and Grisoft offers free antivirus software. I could go on, but you can check out the cool links on my sidebar.

I enjoyed my Learning 2.0 experience, and I can see myself using the new tools I explored. The tasks were sometimes time-consuming, but overall it was fun. I enjoyed my journey, and I hope you will feel empowered to try a few of the things I explored and wrote of in my blog.

Try at least one of the tasks that I explored and see what you think. This is "libhelper" signing off.