I managed to complete ETL507 (the two-term professional placement, study visit, and portfolio subject) and INF506 (Social networking for information professionals) during this last winter (Australian summer) term. I was in paper hell there at the very end, but I am so glad that it is all over and done.

So what were my thoughts? Just because I'm done with those subjects, doesn't really mean I'm done. It seems studying has only caused me to become more curious. Here are some summarizing thoughts (I'm probably writing this too late).

INF506 for me, was pure fun. I got a little carried away at the start diving into social media tools and exploring their uses. It was nice that this was essentially necessary for the class, so I had a good excuse (as I do this kind of thing for fun anyway). When it came time to work on a project, I decided to do something non-education related, and I am so happy I did. I created an online community tool for traveling families. While the site is still its infancy, what this project has done for me was to highlight some of my personal passions. I will continue to maintain this travel wiki (kidsonthego.wikispaces.com), but will treat it as a hobby site. Working on this site has led to other community website projects that I may be helping to develop. Just what I need--more personal projects! I'm not sure why I just can't be one of those people who can watch TV in their free time--I have to go building websites and creating personal projects. Go figure. Anyway, in addition to enhancing my personal passions with social media, I had also encountered a significant amount of fantastic information through rebuilding my personal learning network (PLN). I've gained a better understanding of 21C skills, and have a strong sense of the need to create a culture of sharing and participation.

I found that ETL507 was essential. The professional placement gave me some practical experience to learn a little on the job, though the experience was far too short. The study visits (as I did them) were excellent because I had the freedom to visit libraries of my choice. In my case, I visited several international school libraries (physically, but also virtually), and one university library. I felt a little inexperienced going in and having conversations with library professionals, but fortunately they were very understanding and receptive to my interests. If anything, the portfolio was probably the least 'valuable' experience. While it was good in that it required me to reflect on what I have learned, and the next steps I need to take, I was a little disappointed that it was essentially a paper for the university, and not a thorough portfolio of my experiences. What it did help me discover was that the area I lacked the most was in leadership skills/knowledge. Fortunately, that is my next and final subject!

_I have been a Delicious user since about 2007, and I used to use it extensively. Initially, I didn't tag my sites at all. Later I began to appreciate the value of tagging, and began by usually using the words that were suggested to me. However, I didn't have a plan in mind with my tags. In some cases I tagged something "education" and the next time I tagged something as "teaching". I began to use so many different tags for the same category that I constantly found myself cleaning up my tags. Without regular maintenance and standardization, it became next to impossible to find my links. My use of Delicious then died, until I recently received an email saying that Delicious was sold, and I had to opt in to save my links.

Since its redesign, I have struggled to make Delicious useful. I used to share bookmarks with other users. Those links are no longer to be found, and I have to reestablish those social connections. I used to bundle my tags, but those were erased. I found the bundling feature (a hidden link, though available), and will recreate those when possible. In the rebuild of this website, while my links were transferred, my organizational system and social network were not. These are the features that Delicious was so valuable for. Now, in order to make it useful, it seems we have to start from scratch.

All that being said, I think the idea of sharing bookmarks socially, can be a powerful way to support users who need information. Curating information can happen in so many ways using today’s social media. Delicious is one option for doing this. Students would need to be users, follow my account, and know which tags to pay attention to. However, this appears to be a bit tedious. I believe there are better, more visually appealing and simpler ways to organize and share information, although the new feature of stacks provides some potential. Personally, for the moment I believe Delicous is a great tool for being able to store your favorite links on the cloud, and possibly share them with other people. As a social/sharing site, there are better web 2.0 resources to use at the moment. This one is too unfriendly and needs to work the bugs out before gaining social momentum again

What is Social Networking?
For me, social networking is a way for people to connect. Much like professional networking allows you to make connections to people for professional purposes (e.g. "it's not what you know but who you know"), social networking is staying connected for social purposes. I suppose social networking has always been around, as we connect with our friends and family. However, I think it has become more formalized with web 2.0 tools for social networking because you document who your "friends" are, and you define your relationship to those people with lists, groups, etc.

What Social Networks Have I Used?
I currently use Facebook for my social networking purposes as most of my friends are there. This has become a very big part of my life since I moved to China. In the past I used MySpace, but my effort there has dwindled quite a bit. The culture of MySpace was very different, I found, than Facebook. I have also used Plurk, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Viddler, Ping.fm, Google+, and LinkedIn. I have kept a personal website since 2002, primarily as a way to stay connected family and friends when I first moved overseas, and to share pictures and travel experiences. It was privately hosted and became such a chore! This evolved into a blog in 2006 (privately hosted, and later moved to Wordpress). Not all of these sites are social networks per se, but there is a social element to them through the comments features. I also worked with students on blogs since about 2005 when I started using blogmeister.com with third graders. In my most recent teaching job, we had professional and student blogs that lived on our local server.

What do I Expect to Learn?
I stepped into INF506 without many expectations other than to get more familiar with the web 2.0 technologies out there and learn more about how to use these tools to support learning in the library. To my surprise, I think I've learned a lot from this course in just a week or so by just bringing back to life my presence on these social networks. As I stated before, I've used things like Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks for some time. However, I never really felt that I got much from them (except for Facebook) as very few people in my social circles were accustomed to the culture of commenting and interacting online. My goals however, have changed in the last few weeks. As of today, I'm hoping that I will become a better user of these technologies, but in particular, I'd like to dig deeper into using social networking tools to guide professional development and personal learning. I amazed at all the learning potential that can come from social networks and other free educational sources, and I would love to become a leader to help guide others down their personal learning paths.