Friday, October 26, 2007

Week 9 - Thing 23 - At Long Last!!!

I began this journey with much trepidation - i.e. - I honestly didn't think I could do it! But...as you can see, I DID! There were, of course, many bumps in the road, and there are still things I am very "iffy" about, and honestly, some things which are still as clear as mud, but Jaye's SI post when I was about a third of the way through really helped. I began by thinking that upon completing 23 Things, I would be expected to be an "expert" in the things we explored, and was constantly in a state of nervousness because I didn't feel I would be anywhere near knowledgeable enough by the time I finished, but Jaye's saying that this was mostly about the "journey", and about exploring new frontiers (or at least they were new to a lot of us, anyway) helped me to settle down and start enjoying the ride! My favorite thing was making my "meez" during Play Week - it still makes me giggle, as well as feel very proud of myself for figuring out how to do it (including how to post it to my blog!) every time I look at it! The thing which will be most useful to me personally is Flickr - I can't wait to transfer my Paris and Canada trip pictures to it so I can share them with my friends and family! Workwise, I think I will use LibraryThing the most - it will be a great Reader's Advisory tool, both in Children's and Adult. I was very excited about Zoho Writer, which I will most likely be using in both my personal and work life.

A few things which would have made 23 Things easier:

...understanding ahead of time that nobody expected me to be an expert at the end of this program.

...having a better computer-knowledge base before I started - I have come a long way since I started working at HCL, but still have a long way to go! I will keep plugging away at it, though!

...knowing about and being able to use Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day at the beginning of the program, rather than near the middle.

...being able to work in pairs or as a team on the exercises - I often had to seek out help either from co-workers or my son - it would have been a lot less frustrating and time-consuming if I had had a partner to work with on the program on an ongoing basis.

The only thing I have left to do is to complete my tracking log and send it to Jaye. Actually, the format of the Tracking Log is very puzzling to me - since this program is all about technology, would there not be some way to keep track of our progress online? It just seems really archaic to me to be copying URLs onto a sheet of paper when the whole focus of 23 Things is on what can be accomplished using the Internet!

At any rate, I can't say that I enjoyed every minute of 23 Things, but it certainly had its fun moments, and I do have to say that I am glad I did it, although, in all honesty, at this very moment I am happy to be typing this very LAST sentence to be added to my blog for a while!


TTYL,
Kathy

...

No comments: