Summing up my experience

This assignment has been an eye opener for me and I must admit I have really enjoyed learning and experimenting with all the tools I possibly could in the short timeframe.

It has provided an excellent introduction to such a wide variety of online social media tools and without the encouragement of this course I would have been quite happy to let many of them simply pass me by.

The goals I set include: gain an understanding and learn about tools and think about how they could be used in the work place.

Gain an understanding of the scope of Web 2.0 and learn what role these tools have in our everyday personal life and why they are so popular.

I started this course with the initial impression that Web 2.0 was some sort of black hole made up of innumerable tools that you could access on your mobile when you were travelling on the tram to work in the morning. And who was using it? Well I thought it was just for celebrities telling fans about where they had lunch and if they found a good car park out the front.

Well yes my research indicated that this informal chatting does seem to be a large part of the use (especially twitter) but whether it was deliberate or accidental there has been a spin-off and tweeting and blogging are now also being used to communicate professionally.

This is the main reason I set the goal to determine how can these tools be used professionally in an IM environment so it wasn’t just about learning how to personally use the tool but go beyond that – can they add value to my work place.  

Learn in more detail the technical elements of a number of the popular tools and contribute or experiment with these tools and report my findings (in the relative security of this course).  Determine how these tools can be applied and effectively used in a professional IM environment.

Here is a list of the tools I tried over the weeks;

• Created Gmail and Blogger accounts
• Created a blog
• Created a microblogging Twitter account
• Edited a Wikipedia page
• Contributed to Diigo a Social Bookmarking site
• Set up EndNote
• Contributed to Groups Google Docs discussion
• Created a Google Map

At the start, like all the students, I created a blog.  I used the browser Google Chrome to set up a gmail and blogger accounts.  This was all done in class and it was a bit of a blur however it all went well and I was genuinely surprised just how easy it was. 

My first post was a simple introduction and a short statement of my goals – I have since expanded this statement out further. I was off and running.

The second post was a quick message on how I was being overwhelmed with tweets and some comments on an article I had read.  I provided the email address for the article but was yet to work out how to make a hotlink to the article.  All my group buddies came to the rescue with responses and provided good advice on how to do it.  However before all that, my post had gone astray as I’d accidently added it as a comment and not as a post - so I had to learn how to do a new post from the Overview page.  So I was quickly learning new technical skills !

In a later blog I made a re-visit to my neglected twitter account and stated that I hadn’t initially warmed to twitter.  However, if you manage your account a little better it can be a handy tool for receiving information – you just have to be very selective to who you sign up to.

I added a few posts when I reviewed an IM technology blog by Roy Tennant and another one about PROV’s open day and I demonstrated my new found skill and created a hotlink.

The next task I set myself was to find and edit a Wikipedia page.  To me this was THE major challenge I tried out for this assignment.  I have always had an interest in family history and thought I’d check to see if my G,G, Great Grandfather had a Wiki page as he had done a bit of exploring around the north west corner of Tasmania.  Fortunately for me there was a Wiki page however it was only a ‘stub’ which means it had limited details (one sentence) but readers were invited to expand it. 

On the Wiki site there is a mountain of information on setting up an account, contributing, how to use the sandbox and I spent some time on the referencing info as I couldn’t get the one and only reference right.  As I said in my blog this was a huge learning curve as this was not only going public, it was going out where family members would read it so I’d better get it right !! 

Editing the Wiki page certainly gave me a lot of confidence to review and contribute in a public forum – it did teach me a lot. At the start if there hadn’t been a page I wouldn’t have had the confidence to set one up – I’d certainly be willing to give it ago now.

Another key learning was when I contributed a new topic to my work discussion group on Diigo.  As this was also in a public forum (well work forum) I was hesitant. Since then I have learnt more about this tool and found it can do quite a variety of things.  Out of all the tools I learnt about I consider this Social Bookmarking site the one has the best flexibility suitable for use in the work place.  It's a good tool not only for creating a discussion arena for staff there is the ability to personally manage work related information.

Our Google Doc collaboration demonstrated the usefulness of this handy tool and I certainly recommend it for use in a professional IM environment.  It has a great deal of flexibility and can be used when working on the development of a complex document requiring input from many members of staff. 

Lastly I created a Google Map.  The map that I created shows (with a marker) the location of the RMIT SAB building in Swanston St - this was fun and a nice way complete this assignment !