What Our Photos Say About Us

Looking at our class flickr pages (here and here) it's easy to recognize a few patterns and see what we have in common. Our differences are harder to determine from these images, though.

Similarities

• Looks like we've got a lot of animal lovers!
  
• A lot of the photos are of pieces of art or are artistic themselves, so it seems we have a general appreciation for art and design.
• I see pictures of vacation destinations--we're a group of globetrotters (or, maybe we just all really need a vacation!).
• Computers feature very prominently in our home, school, and work lives.
• But many of us also included pictures of books. Who says print is dead?
  

Differences

• We're spread out geographically.
• We work in different types of libraries.

Education vs. Entertainment

Do education videos stand a chance against entertainment videos?

Of course they do!

First of all, who says the two have to be mutually exclusive? In fact, don't many people prefer their educational experiences to have an entertaining element?

Secondly, as we've discussed time and time again in this course, there are many different types of learners, including visual ones. In Social Software in Libraries, Farkas references dual coding theory, which states that learning is best accomplished through a combination of visual and auditory channels. (206) For these reasons, I think educational videos on the web will continue to be very popular.

I think one of the major benefits of 2.0 technologies and of technology in general is that in our day and age the line between education and entertainment isn't as solid as it once was. The other day I used an online video to learn how to draw a goat (don't ask). This may not be "educational" in the same way our grandparents might conceive of education, but I did learn something! Education has left the classroom and can be found anywhere and everywhere. When I did the 23 Things program with CTLS one of the first topics was lifelong learning. While lifelong learning is nothing new, the internet and things like YouTube make self-directed learning much easier.

Google Docs on Campus

The assignment asks us to make a prediction about the usefulness and acceptance rate of online document sharing tools like Google Docs on college campuses. However, I really don't need to predict anything. I began using Google docs in my very first graduate school course in the fall of 2007 and have used it on most of my collaborative projects since then (which in library school amounts to a lot of projects--we love teamwork!). Professors and classmates are open to and encourage the use of these tools.

I have yet to share a document with a professor of a face-to-face class as I did this week for SCILS598, though. So far, they do still seem to prefer attachments or printed assignments. Still, I think we're moving toward this. In the case of printed assignments, I think we are all becoming more conscious of the amount of paper we use so some people are bound to start looking for alternatives. Google Docs has the advantage over an attachment because there are no concerns about software compatibility, items getting lost in inboxes or accidentally deleted, or any of the other myriad problems that arise with attachments.