Well, here is the "Last Post" for all you bugle fans, and here's my last post for Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0. It has indeed been a long, long trail. I came into this program as a not especially technologically advanced "digital immigrant," using applications like search engines, word processing, and basic spreadsheets easily in my daily work, aware of some of the applications now used regularly by others - and I'm leaving knowing a bit more about a number of digital applications.However, I still don't own a computer, and am in no rush to get one; I prefer to live my life in other ways.
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At the beginning, we were told that this program would take about an hour a week for nine weeks. Maybe this was true for some younger, more digitally savvy folk, but not for me. Ten of the staff members at my branch signed up, and I see that I will be the third to finish. Probably two more will complete the program, but I doubt if the others will; so we'll have a 50% dropout rate. I've heard that some branches had a much greater sign-up rate, and suspect that if this branch had had a "techie" on staff at this time, or even a different mix of personalities, we might have done better at signup and completion.
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It was hard here to find time to work on this. We have lots of computers, but what with desk time and other responsibilities, setting aside a block of time was often impossible - and this work generally demanded blocks of time, not just a few minutes such as could be used to check ones e-mail (or, perish the thought, whip through a quick game of spider). It was best to use a computer in a little-used area, and announce that one was going to be working on "23 Things," so please limit interruptions - sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't
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Another difficulty, maybe only for us older, linear types, was the format of the exercises. Though there were lists of things to be accomplished, much of the information was presented in the form of links - multiple links, sometimes seeming to be a daunting glob of "stuff" in one big mass, with no orderly progression. I wasted a certain amount of time flipping from screen to screen, and finally ended up printing out many of the excercises for reference. I prefer the "classic view" of linear training to the "Aquabrowser" word cloud of items you might find interesting. Sometimes I wondered if I'd really done what was expected (and a few times I was pretty sure that I hadn't, though I felt that I had accomplished the goal of finding something new).
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My posts have been pretty boring and free from exiting insight, but as far as I can tell, hardly anyone is reading them!
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I would certainly be willing to try a similar familiarization or training program again, but my expectations about whipping right through would be moderated. I also look forward to BCPL using some of these applications in our work! It's been great.
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But I still can't seem to figure out how to separate my paragraphs consistently! I've created a clumsy work-around for this post.
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