#23 It’s Only the Beginning...

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

Given the fact that most of the exercises involve the use of tools that have no real application to my particular job, the discoveries that I have most enjoyed are those which have been found to enhance my personal life. As I am a great reader and collector of books, Library Thing has become a favorite of mine. I have also enjoyed learning about podcasts, and have subscribed to several in order to pursue my interests in books and music, although I have not found much time to use them (I would rather spend it reading.)
By contrast, the news/blog feeds, the social networking sites, the on-line book marking tools, although I’ve tried them out, have not fit themselves into my daily routine. This is also true of YouTube, with which I was already familiar. I enjoy browsing for interesting clips on rare occasions, but usually this activity is not given priority for my limited time. I have pretty much honed my usage of the internet down to several key sites (a couple of news outlets, a couple of blogs, a couple of reference tools) each of which I visit every morning, and which I may refer to, as needed, during the course of a day. I find that these sites continue to satisfy my needs and desires, despite all innovations.

• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

As I’ve state in my blog, the impetus to mount a blog of my own, at which site I can express myself about what I read and what my reading causes me to think about, has been the greatest help to my lifelong learning goals. First, the blog prompts me to write on an almost daily basis. Secondly, because it provides an outlet for me to express my thoughts about what I’ve found most valuable in my reading, it has helped to ensure that I read carefully and critically, so as to have a true learning experience, and not just an entertaining one. As my blog has solicited a few comments from people who visit some of the other blogs that I visit, I have received some valuable feedback from the outside world. I have also been able to incorporate the Zoho reader into my blog project as a means of self-publishing some of my writings, and this has been very satisfying.

• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

As I was a new hire on came “on-line” after Learning 2.0 was already under way, I really didn’t think, at the outset, that I would bother to play catch-up, and then continue through all the exercises. I was pleasantly surprised to find that even though many of the tools did not have much application to either my job, or my personal life, I enjoyed doing them and learning about them, nonetheless. It is always good to keep up with the times and be aware of what is going on around you, even if you aren’t a current participant. Becoming aware of what’s going on with Facebook and MySpace, for instance, has given me some insight into what my daughters are up to during all those hours they spend on their computers.

• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I found it difficult to attend any of the sessions that accompanied the computer exercises, since I routinely spend much of my day away from Alden, the only thing that would have helped me on one or two occasions, was more prompt feed-back on questions I e-mailed in when I found myself stumped trying to make something in one of the exercises work for me.

• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate? Or would you be interested in helping to post to a learning blog similar to this one?

To answer the first part of the question, I guess that I would need to know more about what a hypothetical discovery program would be covering to say for sure. But, lacking that knowledge, based only on this experience, I’d say “yes.” As to the second part, I don’t think that I really possess enough technical expertise in any area to be of much help