Twitter is something I can see great value in, but like a few other 2.0 tools, I have yet to regularly find either a personal or professional use for it. I’m still searching for the right ‘voice’ to use for microblogging – both in tone and content.

As a result of that discovery exercise in the SLJ All Together Now learning 2.0 program, I made a concerted effort to get more value out of Twitter.  I followed more people (and checked who they followed) and I tried to tweet more often. In a very short time I was able to connect with a community of like-minded people who work in similar fields to me, or who write / comment about issues I am interested in. I found Twitter to be an invaluable work tool which has kept me informed, answered my questions and brightened my day with odd or funny tweets on more that one occasion. 

My next challenge is how to use Twitter in a work context,  for internal staff communication and for communication with external library customers. I have a few ideas, but in the spirit of Learning 2.0, I will be leaving it to the rest of my colleagues taking part in CityLibrariesLearning to come up with ideas and strategies on how to best use Twitter.

This is how we really learn.

Wonderful stuff!

Photo by Ben Spark

Well it’s time to dust of the learning blog again and track my progress in a new Learning 2.0 adventure.

What’s different for me this time is that I’m running the program! That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly an expert and can teach others about emerging technology – far from it. I have learnt more than ever in the last few weeks and months as this project has come together.

The place where I work (CityLibraries Townsville) launched CityLibrariesLearning – discover*play*connect yesterday.

I am keen to blog my progress as I learn lots of new things throughout this program.

So far I havee explored a lot more features on WordPress, I have edited videos using Windows Movie Maker, converted the file format of those videos, I have uploaded videos to YouTube and embedded those videos on the learning blog – all new things for me. What continues to amaze me is that I used the “help” pages of these tools only a few times. These online tools are so very easy to use – you just have to follow the steps and instructions and in no time you havea blog with fully-functioning videos!

On top of the Learning 2.0 program is another exciting project. Dr Michael Stephens has been appointed the 2009 CAVAL Visiting Scholar and his research project investigating the effectiveness of learning 2.0 programs will be using our program as a case study. More details about the research project can be found on my other blog and Michael’s Tame the Web blog here and here. So as part of that project, I have learnt a lot about academic research, online surveys, and how to communicate effectively with someone on the other side of the world using email, instant messaging and Skype.

• Taking a quick scan of the participants blogs at the Netvibes page, there seemed to be quite a few blogs that didn’t add any posts after the first one or two things, a few more blogs that seemed to stop around thing 4 or 5, and a few others that seem to still be going strong. I wonder if 6 things at a time would be a good format, done 3 or 4 times a year?
• It was great to ‘meet’ a few new people, and re-establish contact with people I’ve met before.
• I’ve used new tools (am liking wordpress…..may just change my main blog over to here…) and have a few other tools on my “to do” list to try out sometime
• It was great to see some genuine newbies learn about 2.0 stuff for the first time, and to see how easy it was for them
• One thing that stood out for me was the ‘noise’ from multiple channels – how do I keep track of, or contact someone – through commenting on their blog, through Flickr mail, through Twitter etc etc. Still working through that one…

Overall it was fun, very interesting, and the whole program was delivered with professionalism and generosity by Michael. Thank you SLJ and Michael!!

But….I do see the social value of things like del.icio.us, and have started to play with an account (http://delicious.com/stainedglasswaterfall). I like the way Michael put it – “You can think of it as peering into another users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user’s filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network”.
Note to self – play more with delicious!

I do find searching the tags on Flickr very useful too, although my own tagging is pretty minimal.

One twitter tool I have found facinating is monitter. The page has three columns where you can enter search words you want to monitor on twitter – your library name (or your name!) perhaps. Then as it finds tweets containing those words, the column will fill up and add those tweets as results.

I have a facebook page, but have made no real attempts to make use of it, for private or work use. I think that needs to change soon….

Library 2.0 – I’ve read a lot and have yet to make up my mind if it is a new ‘thing’ or simply a new way of describing what libraries have done. I think the concept does have legs, in that it is asking librarians to use new technology and methods (and best practice from outside of the library industry) in order to move away from resource and process-centric methods and policies, to customer-centric practices.

I have a few more thoughts than that – have have attempted to put them down here two or three times now, but am not happy with my attempts, so will defer until I can write a more considered response…

“Web 2.0” is a term that is used to denote several different concepts: Web sites based on a particular set of technologies such as AJAX; Web sites which incorporate a strong social component, involving user profiles, friend links; Web sites which encourage user–generated content in the form of text, video, and photo postings along with comments, tags, and ratings; or just Web sites that have gained popularity in recent years and are subject to fevered speculations about valuations and IPO prospects.

Deciding whether a given site is considered Web2 or Web1 can be a difficult proposition. This is not least because sites are dynamic, rolling out new features or entire redesigns at will, without the active participation of their users. In particular, there is no explicit version number and active upgrade process as there is with a piece of software or a communication protocol, and many sites are referred to as being in “permanent beta.”

Some of the important site features that mark out a Web2 site include the following:

• Users as first class entities in the system, with prominent profile pages, including such features as: age, sex, location, testimonials, or comments about the user by other users.
• The ability to form connections between users, via links to other users who are “friends,” membership in “groups” of various kinds, and subscriptions or RSS feeds of “updates” from other users.
• The ability to post content in many forms: photos, videos, blogs, comments and ratings on other users’ content, tagging of own or others’ content, and some ability to control privacy and sharing.
• Other more technical features, including a public API to allow third–party enhancements and “mash–ups,” and embedding of various rich content types (e.g., Flash videos), and communication with other users through internal e–mail or IM systems.