Podcast Module Reflection

This was my first attempt in creating a podcast. I used the GarageBand software on my iMac. It was very easy to use. I did see two problems with the podcast.

One, I didn't like the quality of the sound. In the future, I would buy a mic so I could get a higher quality sound. My iMac came with a microphone, which was used for this assignment.

The other problem was creating an MP3 file from your GarageBand project. I ended up needing to view the help files with GarageBand. Once I used the help files, I was able to understand the instructions and easily create a MP3 file from the project file.

Overall, this was another opportunity for me to use GarageBand and understand the basics of creating a podcast.

Communication Module Reflections

The Web 2.0 technologies were all very interesting. We did something similar to this topic in our library system a few years ago. I didn't have time to finish it at that time. This was a great refresher for me on these technologies. I have used Delicious and LibraryThing recently at work. These two tool have been very helpful for getting my work assignments.

I have been really getting involved with Facebook. Facebook is a great networking tool for college and work. You can even send out last minute questions on your assignments on Facebook and see if anybody can help with the question.

Communication is very important in the role of a librarian. In many cases, we need to do our own PR for our programs. Web 2.0 technologies are very useful for pushing these programs, especially for teens. We are in the process of creating our first teen Facebook site for our library system. We use texting for sending reminders to our registered teens. Librarians must keep up with the latest technologies or become obsolete.

Web Page Module Reflections

My work on the nterdisciplinary community project, for the Florida Aquarium was used for this module. This was a great learning experience for me. It forced me out of my comfort zone of library specific projects and think through rearranging the individual components of a website from scratch. In the next few days, I will actually start a similar project at work with the Tampa-Hillsborough County library website. The concepts I learned in this project will help me immensely on our future website.

This project also gave me an opportunity to team up with students from different disciplines in the university. Each discipline brought something to the table and it was a very unique experience. I believe it was a great team building challenge on dealing with different types of students (undergraduate / graduate) and different disciplines.

The areas I would change were related to the changes in the project. We gave two progress reports on Friday afternoons that were not planned from the beginning. In the future, these dates should be given to the students at the start of the project. Also, the specifications changed from the beginning. Students didn't know exactly what the expectation were for the project. I did get into the project late, which might have slowed me down in relation to learning the specifications for the project or understand everything necessary for the project.

My thanks to Diane Austin for giving me this opportunity.

Publication Module Reflections

I decide to take some risks and new challenges while working on this module. The publications made in this module were used in my poster session during FLA 2010. I used Power Point for the poster. In my Basic Info class, we created a poster for the class. I used the same template, modified it, and used it for my poster this year. The major issues were just finding the correct photos for the correct portions of the template. Some of the images were found in Microsoft clip art. The other images were edited using Adobe Photoshop.

For my handouts, I used Adobe InDesign. This was the first time using this program. At work, I use a similar program called Microsoft Publisher. I found a template for creating the handouts and modified it. Inserting images was a challenge for me in this program. I never could get it to resize correctly by just clicking on the corners. I ended up resizing it in photoshop and then inserting the image. Other than that particular issue, I was able to figure out enough to finish the document.

In the future, I plan on taking a course just on inDesign.

Presentation Module Reflections

This was a certainly a learning experience for me in relation to using Keynote for presentations. The first lesson learned was related to exporting keynote files to powerpoint or quicktime. You do not get the exact look or effects exporting to powerpoint. In fact, I would say it was unusable. Quicktime was better, but the sound files must be kept as separate files when exporting.

The other problem was related to inserting sound clips. Keynote has the ability to record narration for your slides. The problem is you cannot record sound just for one slide. It is all or nothing. The solution is recording the sound clips in GarageBand and inserting them as sound clips into Keynote. This took me a while to figure out, but it solved the problem.

I also used the microphone included with the iMac. In the future, I would use a separate mic. I don't think the quality was good enough for this type of presentation. It was not bad, but it could be better.

I also played with using photos from flickr's creative commons section. I believe this is a good solution for some photos, but it took awhile to understand how to give credit on the slides.

Overall, this was a good experience. I did need to request for more time on this project, but I believe I succeed in my goals mentioned in my learning contract in relation to navigation and audio.