Reflecting back on the 23 . . .

First of all, let me just say this . . . WHAT A GREAT FEELING TO BE FINISHED! But the question emerges: what will I do with myself now that I AM finished? (Besides the laundry, read all those books stacked up from Christmas break, and clean the house) This has been a lot of fun. Not always -- certainly not at first. At the beginning, when everything was so new and foreign to me, it was slow going. Putting the avatar together was a big learning curve, but the end product was very rewarding! And now I'll actually have time to change that poor girl's outfit once in a while! Flickr was undoubtedly the hardest lesson for me, and the one I spent the longest amount of time on (like, the whole weekend!). I think the biggest thrill for me was the RSS feeds. First of all, the knowledge of what that symbol meant was heady in and of itself! I had seen it for so long, and now I not only knew what it meant, I could actually manipulate it and use it for my own benefit! Then, thrill of all thrills, my tech-savvy brother knew far less than I about it! I think that's when I began to feel empowered with a capital E by the 23 Things.

I used to be very timid towards using technology in the library, but after getting into this project, I turned a huge corner in my behavior and habits. I am now very eager to use technology, setting up blogs for students and teachers in the Thompson Book Club, embracing the laptop computers that were delivered to our campus last semester and using them with third graders during research, spreading the word among teachers that wikis can be useful in collaboration, and encouraging Boxtop profit dollars to be spent on LCD projectors and ELMO 22O2 document cameras. If we were to do another 23 Things-type project, I would gladly participate, because this has grown and stretched me in ways I could never have imagined before last October. This has been great.