Lots of highlights (and some low lights!) over the last few months with participating in the Web 2 experience...
The biggest low for me was definitely the amount of time that was invested. I would have loved to have seen North Shore Libraries support this fully by allowing us to complete the exercises during work time, but in a structured way ie: an hour or so each a week.
However, overall, I personally found the program to be a great learning curve and I am really happy that I have participated as there have been some great benefits in doing so.
It was intriguing to see the flurry of colleagues signing up and the sheer determination displayed as people were trying to figure out who other people were! There were lots of interesting 'relationships' and 'conversations' between blogs going on and it became quite a fascination for many people and almost a 'cult-like' compulsion to check the comments left on blogs! And then there were the ones who got obsessed with the progress chart...!!
The level of creativity and talent shown on colleagues blogs in the way of enhancements etc was extraordinary. It became obvious that there are definitely some web savvy experts amongst us (not mentioning any names quizzylizzy & soandso) and this served to inspire others to do the same and some of the results were amazing. For those of us who had never blogged before, let alone having any experience with widgets, page elements or generators etc, it was amazing to see how easily these tools could be utilised with very satisfying results...
On a personal level, I discovered some fabulous sites that I will definitely continue to use:- Flickr and de.lici.ous being two of them. I will also probably continue to 'blog' as it seems to have become second nature to me and I quite like the anonymity of it and the sense of ownership it brings.
Exploring the different 'generators' was a fun thing to do and the array of options just astounds me. Very satisfying to use minimum effort for maximum results with these and it is something I will utilise again. Most impressive! Definitely something for everyone...
My least favourite sites were Rollyo, Technorati and RSS feeds. Nothing specific...just not sites I found useful or would utilise again.
I think it is great that so many staff attempted to complete this course and am sure that we have all gained much from the experience.
The next step is to master the MP3 player....!