Thing 23: Final Thoughts

I enjoyed the opportunity to explore things I had heard about but have never had a chance to try. I do not know if this experience will change the look of my media center or the services we offer but it has certainly enhanced my personal knowledge. I know we won't have a presence of MySpace since it is blocked at school to our students and staff.

Some of the things were interesting but not possible in a one-librarian setting. IMing or text messaging reference questions implies that someone is available to answer them. There are too many other tasks (teaching mainly) to devote time to that one. Second, our students are required to keep their cell phones in their lockers during the school day.

My favorite things were the ones that I felt would enhance my personal productivity. I liked del.icio.us so that I could access my bookmarks from any computer. This has already proved useful as I try to tell someone about a great site that I have found. I expanded Bloglines to include more and more varied feeds including magazine feeds and podcast feeds. I would not have known that was possible without 23 Things on a Stick.

I am eager to do more exploring of Google Docs and Zoho to use with kids who are doing group projects. Our current system of having kids store their files on a common drive isn't working well for us. The common drive gets full and no one can save anything. Apparently, no one ever removes things from the common drive when the project is finished. And the common drive is only available when students are in school making it difficult for them to work on projects when they are not in the building.

I would definitely take part if a 23 More Things on a Stick program were offered. Although I would like to wait for a while until all the things I have learned in these 23 have "settled" and become part of my daily practice.