Summing it Up...

Now as my blogging experience comes to an end (for the moment anyway) I have come to realise that this Create-Communicate-Collaborate project has taught me a lot and has challenged me to go out of my comfort zone. 

Having a look back at the learning goals I set myself at the start of this project, as well as the ones I set in the middle, I think that I accomplished all of them to some degree. I was able to extend my knowledge of Twitter beyond what I already knew but I did not do so for Google Docs/Drive. I think that I did not accomplish this part of my learning goal because I devoted my time to learning about RSS feeds, something which I hadn’t looked at before. I also contributed to a collective resource, however, since completing my post on BillionGraves I have not gone to the site since. This may be due to the rapid pace we have gone through different Web 2.0 tools meaning that I just had the chance to learn about one tool before having to learn about the next. Another thing I have learnt is how valuable a mobile phone is these days. I was able to keep up with Twitter and write blog posts and reply to other peoples blogs on the go. It has been fantastic, until I lose reception on the train. 

The main learning goal I feel I have achieved is that I’ve increased my repertoire of Web 2.0 tools which may benefit me in the future. But at the same time I have found that it has been a bit tedious to write a blog post each week. But I think that it has been a valuable experience in itself. I hadn’t written a blog previous to this so I have learnt a lot about blogging too. I have learnt how to change the layout of a blog (only now am I almost happy with the layout of my blog), I have worked out how to embed links and I have learnt that Google can be your best friends, or your worst enemy, when you need to know how to do something.  

An important aspect of this project is that it has further taught me to be resourceful and persistent.  I think that this is an important skill going into the information management industry because as I have learnt technology is an important part of IM and the technology we will be using will not always work and we need to know how to deal with that.

Oh, one last thing. The thing that has annoyed me most about blogging? Proving I am not a robot when replying to other peoples blogs. Does anyone else have trouble reading what the code says?

Well that’s it for me

Goodbye and Good luck with your experiences with Web 2.0

Exploring One Billion Graves….

Along with Twitter, this week I joined and contributed to the collaborative resource BillionGraves.com. As someone who is interested in genealogy I thought that this would be an interesting website to explore as I had never come across it before. 

It is marketed as a resource that allows you to ‘Help Make Family History Available to Everyone’ through photographing and transcribing grave stones. Members can either take GPS-tagged photos of graves using their smartphone with the BillionGraves app or transcribe graves. While I am unsure about how easy it is to take photos and upload them I found that transcribing graves was relatively easy due to the user friendly interface.  However, the issue that I was faced with was that I continually came across images that were illegible. While you have the option to report these images I found it annoying that I had to do this on numerous occasions. Another thing I found a little odd was that despite there being around 6 000 images to transcribe if I skipped an image it would appear again a few images later.

Nevertheless, I think that this is a good way to preserve images of graves and allow amateur genealogists to contribute to a resource. I think an issue that librarians can face is they have to direct patrons to multiple resources for their genealogical research. BillionGraves has the potential to reduce this need as librarians can direct patrons to this one resource. However, for the time being this is not really possible as there is a lot of focus on graves in America while other countries seem to be a little neglected. Only time will tell whether this resource will become truly beneficial or not.

my first blog entry

Hi everyone!

My name is Katherine and welcome to my first blog entry. 

In the past I have had a chance to briefly look at Web 2.0 technology and its impact in relation to linguistics but through this project I am looking to further extend this knowledge to a professional setting. 

In the coming weeks I hope to:

• Extend my knowledge of the tools I have already come across such as Twitter and Google Docs and hopefully find out information and features about them I did not already know  
• I would like to contribute to a collective resource such as BillionGraves 
•  Increase my repertoire of Web 2.0 tools which may benefit me in the future

I think exploring this technology in more detail will be both exciting and beneficial. I am looking forward to the journey which follows and can’t wait to get started.