Fine!

Wow, I have finished this 23 Things self-paced workshop, and I have learned quite a lot. I was not necessarily technologically challenged, but I had not taken the time to really work with some of the technologies.

I am very excited about several technologies that we could use in the library. I was very impressed with the concept of using IM and Wikis for staff communications. I see that this oucld save us quite a bit of time. I can also see that using Del.icio.us could work quite well with my teens or with my staff to come up with webliographies. For now I am using Del.icio.us to bookmark in such a way that I can access it anywhere.

For our patrons I can see a multitude of possibilities. While we currently have a wiki, we need to get permission to have a blog and some sort of IM for reference. Our main problems here are working within the rules of our city. We are trying to determine if IM would constitute
"public record." If it does, then we would have to keep logs of everything. What a mess. I can certainly see many of the "fun" web based programs being used in programs for our patrons. I personally loved the trading card maker to make librarian cards to hand out to teens. I have also been won over to having library sites in mySpace, Facebook, and flickr. I now have a much better understanding of how to use them as marketing tools.

I have also started using some of the things that I learned in this class for myself. Del.icio.us, the RSS, the iGoogle, and the blog are the things that I use the most. I enjoy getting google updates about Harker Heights and our Library. For purely personal reasons, I have started my own blog about role-playing. For Christmas my daughter and I used the trading card maker to make sets of cards for our role-playing group.

I would definitely take another, more advanced course like this. I think that many of my staff were so knowledgeable to begin that they would like advanced material. If I were going to change anything for this workshop or institute changes for upcoming workshops, I believe that I would look at breaking workshops into smaller pieces so that "attendees" could feel completion. To be done right, this workshop took far more than 15 hours for even my most technologically advanced staff members. We thought that individuals could work on the workshop when they were not busy at the desk, but we soon found out that wouldn't work at all. We had to schedule staff members the time to complete the workshop. I had my entire staff take this online course. About half the staff has completed the program. I firmly believed that everyone needed to take the course regardless of their prior knowledge. By doing so we now can refer to technologies with which everyone will be familiar.