Week 9, Thing 23: Summarize your thoughts about this program and learn more about where to go from here.

Well, it's been a long nine weeks (oops, I mean 12 weeks), but I've finally come to the end of the journey.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Creating avatars, trading cards and the like was a lot of fun. It was interesting to know about them and I could see ways to use them in future programming.
2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I am definitely more aware of all that I don't know. It's hard to decide what direction to take, since there is so much information to take in and a finite amount of time available.
3. Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
There were a number of things that I thought might be useful to pass on to our customers. I was unaware, for example, of the free word processing sites. We frequently have customers with compatibility problems between the different computers that they are using.
4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? Not everyone learns best independently. As the weeks went on, it was suggested that staff help one another and a number of people formed informal partnerships. Maybe pairing staff from the beginning would help those less technologically savvy to have a more successful experience. Time was also a factor. The exercises required an uninterrupted block of time to complete - not always easy to come by.
And last but not least…
5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate? Yes - One of the things about being a librarian (at least for me) is knowing a little bit about a lot of things and then having the ability to find out more as needed!
6. How would you describe your learning experience in a few words or a few sentences, so we can share our successes and promote this program? I enjoyed being exposed to a variety of technologies and services. I do feel that I just "skimmed the surface" of many things and don't know if I'll have the time to look at them again unless I actually need them for a customer or program. Libraries need to keep up with this kind of thing, because information is our business and our customers need to know that we know about the things that interest them both on the Web and off!