#26 and #27 Final thoughts

I don't want to gush too much here and be uncool (or more so than usual, anyway), but I think this has been a fantastic learning experience. I'm very happy to have been offered this opportunity and I learned a lot. The only drawback has been finding the time to really explore these things; which I haven't done yet. I will definitely go back and look more closely at the things we covered and explore more on my own. I think I had been stuck in a bit of a rut, just Googling and using the Web resources I already felt comfortable with, and now I realize how much more there is out there... how the Web is evolving and changing so quickly. I would like to do more continuing education like this in the future as more new resources emerge.

The most difficult part of this experience for me, aside from the time factor, has been blogging. I'm just not very comfortable writing a blog. I thought I would probably be completely comfortable with this by the end of the 27 things, and I am a lot more comfortable than I was at the beginning (and less self-conscious), but I still find blogging to be the most difficult part of the whole thing.

Some of the most surprising things for me were things that we didn't actually cover, but I took note of during Stephen Abram's talk, like Second Life. I realize that we couldn't cover it in this exercise because of the software and time involved in getting set up, but I have found Second Life interesting in many ways, both good and bad -- does this type of "virtual world" represent the next stage of the Web? Maybe a couple of years from now, we will all have avatars representing us running around on the Web and interacting with each other.

Other surprises were simply the amount and variety of tools that are available on the Web, for free, these days. I loved Library Thing and couldn't stop cataloging my books, and I'm amazed at all of the free software applications that are available now. I didn't realize the extent to which most of these things have a social networking aspect to them.

I don't know which discovery exercise I would choose as a favorite; I enjoyed them all in their own ways. The ones that required us to create or upload photos were a bit less enjoyable for me because of the time involved. I'm also reticent about having a lot of personal information about myself on the internet, so I tend to not fill in online profiles much.

I found the discovery exercises to be so well-written that I didn't need much help along the way, but I would like to thank our advocates for volunteering to be there to help us; we had plenty of great help available in my department. As for the last question, would I do it again? Absolutely! I've been telling all of my friends about the cool learning program we're doing at work (the more technology-oriented ones are excited; the technophobes are a bit horrified... but I've told them it was not mandatory participation...). I would do it even if we weren't getting an mp3 player; it's just icing on the cake, and I don't have one so I'll be happy to accept it.

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, and I hope we can do more of this in the future!