Curtain Call!

I have to admit that I've had lots of fun completing the course. Like Astrosloth, I liked it how you could work at your own pace. The activities were user-friendly and enjoyable.

I think the most important part, however, was that you had to reflect on the applicability of these applications to libraries -- in particular academic libraries... There's no use jumping on the technological bandwagon if users or staff won't find the applications useful!

The time factor wasn't too bad for me as I completed most of the activities during the Christmas/New Year lull -- I think if this were rolled out as a staff-wide activity, some thought would have to be given to how much time staff would need to allocate to each of the activities, and how this may affect other aspects of their job. Would staff be able to complete the course at a time of their choosing, or would they be encouraged to complete it at a particular time of the year?

While I knew about things like Facebook, Flickr, and blogs, I'd never actually contributed to a wiki, and knew virtually nothing about Delicious or Technorati.

In the spirit of finding something new to discuss, I thought I'd point out something I heard about at the recent ALIA Information Online Conference: vokis! See http://www.voki.com/

Basically vokis are animated avatars which can speak. You can create a unique look for your avatar and can record the dialogue he/she speaks. Not sure about licensing/costs etc, but it certainly seems interesting! Maybe they could be used in Subject Guides or in virtual tutorials. Although recording a real person, such as in this iResearch tutorial: http://elearning.library.usyd.edu.au/learn/plagiarism/index.php is probably just as effective.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be a part of the pilot!