Summary of 23 Things

Now I have come to the end of my journey of the 23 things. I have had both successes and setbacks, but it was overall not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I have gotten the help I needed to complete the tasks from co-workers, and I have learned a lot about technology in the process. I enjoyed most of what I did, but my favorite things were creating word documents, blogging, and using Librarything. My least favorite was looking for the podcast and listening to it. I am sure I will some of these things in my job, some I use frequently. As for some of the others, probably not very much.

The program has assisted my lifelong learning goals by helping to develop some better time management and self discipline to complete large tasks in the future. I was surprised by how much information was on some of the websites I looked at. I didn't realize how much data can be on one website. Another surprise was getting through some of the tasks with ease that I expected to have more problem with. It was thrilling to accomplish a difficult task whether I did it on my own or got assistance from a co-worker. Once the skill was mastered, I could not wait to practice it again. I will take away a new knowledge of technology and the tools that are available to anyone for use.

One change I would like to see in future programs of this type is to have more time to complete the tasks. I realized from the beginning that it would be difficult to fit this into my work schedule since my hours are limited and my job requires a lot of time to be spent on a public service desk. It was a little overwhelming toward the end to have to learn a new thing every week. I would like to see future training broken down into smaller components and geered more toward different skill levels. I would like to see more time allotted in the future during work hours for programs like this. I would participate again in this type of program if it were broken down into smaller components and time was considered more. It was self paced, but there was not really enough time to go into detail on every task.

To sum up my learning experience, I feel I have benefitted from mastering new skills. It was also a process of discovering which tasks I liked and which I did not. At the recent Technology Fair presented by the library system I work for, all of us were given an overview of a lot of the technology that has been used in this program. This was helpful to have at least seen some of these things before having to work with them. I have definitely learned something about myself and acquired some new skills. Further, I was extremely grateful for the help so willingly given to me by my co-workers. I believe I will be able to look back at this time in a few years and realize how far I have come and how much I have learned.