WEB 2.0 AND SOCIAL MEDIA FOR DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP

 Workshop Experiences

When an opportunity to attend a training in Web 2.0 and Social Media arose, i jumped at the opportunity and registered to attend. I am a librarian by profession and one of the most critical requirements for librarians is to stay afloat with the dynamic technology in this information era. One of my personal goals is to always further my skills and abilities so that i stay relevant as an individual and as a professional.

I learnt what web 2.0 and social media tools are and how i can use them to improve my work. I learnt about the creation and use of wikis, tags, feeds, cloud storage services, mash ups, social bookmarking.I had the opportunity of creating a Google drive account and a dropbox account. These are beneficial in that i can store my files in them and share with the people i want. I can even open these files from either my phone, laptop, desktop and so on.  I was also introduced to different social networks, some of which i had never used. I was taught how to use and create blogs. I managed to create my first blog titled The young professional librarian: http://theyoungprofessionallibrarian.blogspot.com/

The information i have gained has put me in a position to not only use the social media tools but to be able to compare them and make the best decision on which tools to use for development in my work place.

My plans

My first plan is to go back to my workplace and organise a short training on Web 2.0 and Social Media for development. There already is a scheduled training week for June 2014. I will lobby for a session to train my colleagues. I intend to introduce the use of social bookmarking to create subject guides for different departments at the NUST University. I also plan to continue using all the tools that i created. I already have a blog addiction that i intend to keep. I feel that i am now in a better position to effectively and efficiently select the best tools to use in my work spaces.