Summary

I found this whole exercise to be a lot of fun and very informative. I had played around with almost all these elements before but had never used them to actually create anything. I love the flexibility of the blog and the ability to update and change it at the drop of a hat. Very cool. I actually found myself going back time and again and making little changes, tweaking this or that, adding an element here or there. I would find some neat thing and think "I could put that on my blog!" and then spend an hour or so figuring it out and posting it. I think one of the most important things was finding that level of comfort where you felt you could tackle any task and figure it out, no matter what it was.

I found the RSS feeds to be the biggest challenge and honestly, there is quite a bit about them I still don't understand. The ability to have instant access to a variety of feeds is very cool but I wasn't sure how that would be better than simply having links within your blog. I will defiantly be researching this more thoroughly!

At PVLD we already use the blog model with our many library related blogs and I think it works great! It's such a quick and efficient way of getting information out to the patrons and can be updated easily. I also think people have gotten used to checking the web for national and local news, celebrity gossip and just about everything else; so keeping in a format they know and understand makes it that much easier to get your message out.

I thought the "self-directed" learning was great. It allowed everyone to move at their own pace which was good because some people really got into it and roared through all the tasks in no time. Other people were more hesitant and being able to take their time, and even ask for help from those who had finished the tasks, was very appreciated.