Reflections on Learning 2.0

For me, this has been an interesting, challenging, eye-opening, and sometimes frustrating experience. I really want to understand and improve my facility with these new technologies but it doesn't come easily or intuitively for me. Going through the motions on some of the programs has given me a little more confidence that I can do it, and it has been a stretching experience.

I think my favorite parts were learning how to set up a blog, and I hope to develop that as a tool for communicating my thoughts about books I am reading. I also was happy to discover delicio.us because that will be a useful tool for me in my work. I was surprised to see how the computer/internet is becoming such an amazing place for sharing ideas and work and how customized it can be for your own particular purposes (e.g., wikis, bloglines, etc.).

My biggest problem is time - time to practice, time to become more familiar with different sites, and simply time to "use" the tools that are available. In the long run, they may save time but until they become part of my routine, it is just one more thing to think about.

In going through this learning process, I found that it was very difficult for me to do it at work. Maybe I was too distracted, but in the few "off-desk" hours I have, it always seemed that there was something more urget that needed to be done. Therefore, I ended up doing a lot of the exercises on my own time at home. I didn't mind doing that, but perhaps in the future it would be helpful to have a scheduled "class time" once or twice during the learning period, so that if people want to, they could attend a lab at a library in their region (maybe for an hour before opening or something like that) just to get a little help as needed or catch up. That would have helped me with some of the obstacles that slowed me down. My local "mentors" were very helpful and willing to do what they could, but I wasn't always available when they were and vice versa.

All in all it has been a good experience and I hope I won't forget what I have learned but will keep on and use some of these new technologies. I think this was a great idea and I would be willing to learn more in the future.