Monday, April 14, 2008

Thing 23: Final thoughts

Basically, I feel like a learned A LOT going through the 23 Things on a Stick program. Sometimes I felt (and still feel) overwhelmed by all of the information in each Thing, because I felt like I didn't have enough time to explore as much as I wanted to. The program opened up a lot of doors as far as promoting the library, offering classes, etc. It also consistently brought up issues with the filtering of the computers, which I think is something that needs to be addressed. It's pretty hard to incorporate some of these tools (such as MySpace or YouTube) if people who come into the library don't have access to them.
Some of my favorite Things were some I was already familiar with. I really liked Bloglines, because I like having everything right in front of me. Especially as more friends and family create blogs, it's nice to just add them to my feeds, and that way I'll automatically know when they're updated instead of constantly having to check each site separately. I can see myself using that for years to come.
I also really enjoyed learning about Flickr. I really didn't know anything about it, but I love the idea of using it as a backup for photos. I love pictures, and it would devastate me if anything happened to them, so this is a project I plan to undertake using Flickr.
LibraryThing and Facebook were tools I already used and loved, but I got the opportunity to explore them further and discovered aspects of each that I was unaware of before. It's made me want to keep learning more about each and really take advantage of what they have to offer.
One thing that surprised me about the 23 Things on a Stick was that I really wasn't sure I would use any of them in my daily, personal life (although I'm not sure why I thought that). I already use Bloglines and Facebook everyday, have started getting my photos on Flickr, and have begun to do even more with LibraryThing. So I've really taken a lot away from this program. And that's just to name a few.
One suggestion that I think would make things so much easier would be if the links on the 23 Things on a Stick blog could open in a separate window. It's difficult to follow directions when you constantly have to go back to the 23 Things blog instead of going back and forth. Maybe there is a way to do that and I just didn't figure it out, but that to me was a little frustrating at times. I would participate in more programs if management allowed work time to complete them.
It's difficult to sum up in one word or sentence my experience or thoughts on 23 Things on a Stick, but I guess I would say it made me feel more comfortable with all of the different tools that are out there, and it also made me want to learn much, much more. Overall a very successful program.

3 comments:

jd aka diane said...

"new page" -- they could setup their webpage to "open a new window" otherwise you can use "ctlr n" and this will give you another window with the same webpage ... then you can use the "new" window to navigate and still have the original window open to go back to ... I did this quite often while working through the 23 Things.

jd aka diane said...

oops! typing error ... s/b "ctrl n" ;)

23 Things said...

Congrats on finishing all 23 things. jd's suggestion is a good one. You can also right click on a link in Windows/PC and it will open the link in a new window. Making the "things" open in a new window would require adding code to every link--too much work for the number of links.

Glad you enjoyed the things and learned a lot. Stay tuned for another round of new things in the fall or winter.