21 Reflection

This is it. Time to reflect on what was the most beneficial at a professional level.

- RSS feeds (some are included in this blog and some were added to the Accounting subject guide.

- the wiki and the ability to trace the being the various alterations over time.

- Delicious is a fantastic application. I no longer need to update and export my favourites, they are always available and searchable by keyword.

- the Yahoo pipes. Although I have yet to make one myself, I think they could be used in a variety of ways. I'm thinking of the "Find your feet" orientation web site under construction. For example a pipe for finding buildings locations at RMIT together with some description. Thus a foreign student would only need to type REW or building 86 and the map would pop up. (I could not find building 86, no matter how long I looked at the campus map).

- YouTube There are some very interesting videos. The library should develop their own or borrow from others, since this generation is more visual than print oriented. The videos on how to make a basic yahoo pipe allowed me to grasp the idea quicker than any description on paper. TeacherTube is also a source of very interesting clips.

This video, on Gary Pearce's Tertiary Learning and Teaching subject guide, should be compulsory viewing for library and teaching staff.



- SurveyMonkey is being used across RMIT libraries to survey staff and analyse the result and is simple to use.

The blog directory getblogs.com provides some kind of order in the endless proliferation.

Applications I will not used, although it is useful to know they are available include:
- Social news . What does it take to get to the front page of Digg? shows the vacuity of some applications.

- Buzzle. On the day I visited Buzzle Breakings News & Reports section I noticed that all the articles were sourced from The Guardian! I could not find mention of this fact anywhere on the website. Are readers aware they are reading from the one source?

That the Internet is unpredictable was obvious on a number of occasions. Blogs URLs posted a few days prior had disappeared by the time my post was published.

- 43 Things Although I do make lists, my online calendar and paper based agenda have suffice so far. I do not need an email reminder to know what must be achieved by a certain date. Now I must revisit some of the programmes I subscribed to during 21 lunges and delete my email to stop those pestering reminders.

- FaceBook. I know some libraries have a facebook profile but I have yet to be convinced of its usefulness. The language is too "chummy". What is wrong with the library website? After all we are in academia. As an individual I will delete my entry on Facebook, if possible. I have no interest in putting private information on the net.

All in all this was very instructive for me, even though I will not use all the programmes available. I definitely feel more at ease with technology and this alone is very satisfactory.