Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Finished the program!

With this post I will have officially completed the Columbus Library's Learn and Play program. It's been a lot of fun learning to create this blog and explore all the interesting new "things" that are going on on the web. It was an eye opening experience to find all the creative online tools to gather, organize, and share information. After going through this program I will no longer view the web as an overwhelming series of isolated sites. Rather, I see it as a vast data source that is fortunately populated by islands of coherence where I can organize my lifelong learning.

My favorite islands were:

--Bloglines, where I now get interesting feeds from favorite websites sent to me each day.
--The two map sites, Google Earth and Live Search Maps, from which I can view any spot on the planet in amazing detail.
--YouTube, where I can find an astonishing number of interesting and/or entertaining video clips.

And I'm sure I'll discover new favorites soon!

But in general the biggest thing I took away from this exercise is the understanding that the web is changing, and that old ways of using it (email, surfing, favorites, etc.) are being replaced by newer and more effective techniques. The trick is finding those islands--those organizing places on the web--where the vast chaos of the internet morphs into concrete learning.

The Columbus Public Library is to be commended for giving all of its staff--not just librarians--the push to get this exposure to Web 2.0. Now in turn we'll all be positioned to push for Library 2.0, the next generation of public libraries.

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