Thing 23. Final Thoughts

I can't believe I finished on time. Thank you for the carrot of the "stick".

I am grateful that this was not my first introduction to a significant portion of these tools. This tells me at least I am partially keeping up. However, without this push, I don't think I would have ever given so much thought as to how these tools can be incorporated into how we deliver services.

There are tools that I learned about that I wish I knew about earlier. Del.icio.us is one of them! It even helped to speed me along in completing this project! I knew about tiny URL but now use it more frequently simply because this exercise gave me the practice to make it part of my work.

I use tabbed browsing and now have my blog as one of my 3 home pages on both my work and home computer. RSS feeds with the blog and the addition of them to other tools I use make them so much more useful than the way I was initial taught. One of my responsibilities as a supervisor is was to follow the progress of the staff in my division who were participating. The RSS feeds not only made it easy, but encouraged me to explore their ideas. It was nice to have a different way to communicate with staff. One that was more reflective and less responsive. I have learned a lot from them.

FaceBook, YouTube, and LibraryThing were my favorite "things". I have accounts for all 3 and use them daily and my poor family has been subjected to them as well. At least some of them have embraced these social networking sites and it allows me to connect with them in a new way.

Not overly fond of some of the communication and collaboration tools -- mainly because they were not as robust as the tools I already use. However, they have alerted me to new possibilities when working on committees where we do not share the same tools. How nice to have free and easy access to them.

I see the 23 Things as part of my journey. Completing the program is in no way the end of my learning process. Thank you though for giving me a needed kick in the butt to further expand my knowledge and see some potential where I didn't before.