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

Whew! Task 23. Our Web 2.0 course is over and I have to admit that I have mixed feelings.

I definitely feel that this is a course worth taking. It would be naive for us to presume that our world is not going in an increasingly technical direction. I hope that libraries with print text do not become obsolete but it isn't outside the realm of possibility. So how do we survive? By keeping up with the times. We need to know what type of new technology is out there and what new developments there are within these technologies. We may not need to use them everyday but we need to know they are available! So in this sense I think this course was well worth my time.

I love to learn new things. I truly enjoyed learning about the different "tools" out there that I wouldn't necessarily discover on my own. I also liked the discovery resources and exercises because they pushed you to really learn about the different tasks. My favorites usually involved the creative outlets like Flickr, the image generators, creating our blogs, and YouTube. I also liked some of the more social sites like Library Thing, Wikis and the online productivity tools. I also like the RSS feeds (for me Google Reader) so that you can get the stuff you're interested in sent directly to you! I fully intend to continue using many of these tools and even if I don't use some of them, it is good to know they are available.

I personally liked the fact that this course is something you can do on your own (or with help if you need it). I wouldn't change too much about the course except perhaps making it even more of a self discovery concept. I think it would be interesting if we could choose the 9 weeks (or 23 things) that we found most interesting out of the original 43 things program (with a couple "must-dos" if necessary). Then have some sort of group get-together where we could teach each other about the items that we selected and the other participants did not. That way we could do the whole 43 things course in approximately the same time period.

I would take another discovery program if it was offered on one condition (and this is where the mixed feelings come in): If I could take it in the winter! I loved this course but it did stress me out at times. We are exponentially busier in the summer than the winter and squeezing this course into my day was chaotic at times. So although I'm a little bummed that I no longer have a legitimate excuse to play on my work computer, I'm kind of glad the extra work-load is lifted.

So in sum: I came, I learned, I loved it, I would do it again (but in the winter).