Week 9, Thing 23: Summarize your thoughts about this program and learn more about where to go from here

Back when I first was introduced to the idea of doing Maryland 23 Things, it was billed as only taking about 1/2 hour per week. WRONG! Maybe 1/2 hour per Thing would have been more accurate, but some things were hella hard about which to teach oneself, and even with that estimate it would not be completely accurate. But I was bound and determined to complete this program and unfortunately I think some of my collections suffered from my determination.

My favorite discoveries/exercises... I really like Flickr. As some of you may have noticed, I have kittens. And I think if I didn't have new pictures on my Flickr every week, I might get lynched. So this is something that I will continue to use. I'm not sure if I will continue with blogging, however. I used to have a LiveJournal account... and I have a MySpace account... but I am really bad at blogging on there. But maybe I'll turn this into a kitten tales blog and go from there. Who knows. While LibraryThing was a lot of fun, I don't really see me using it in the future. Same is true for Rollyo. I'm also really excited to explore Wikis more. It seems that the staff for BbN:DH would like to incorporate that into our webpage to keep those fluid things up to date. So, I'll probably continue to learn more about them.

Things to improve the program: I would definitely tell those interested in doing this program a more realistic time frame for how long it takes to do each exercise. I'm sure I could have flown through this in a month if I didn't actually care about understanding the exercises. Some people may have done just that. However, you only get out of this program what you are willing to put into it. And while it burns me to think that those who did the bare minimum on this project will be getting the same amount of CEUs and the same chances to win the drawing as I do, I just keep reminding myself that they cheated themselves out of an opportunity to really learn and more importantly, really understand about Web 2.0.

Another improvement: One was not instructed to create the blog until Thing 3, but one was supposed to blog about Things 1 and 2. This resulted in my having to redo things 1 and 2 because I couldn't remember enough about them (especially Thing 2) in order to blog about them after Thing 3.

Overall, I did enjoy this program. Yes, some of the 'features' of Web 2.0 are not for me. But if something like this was offered again, I would probably sign up to participate, barring it wouldn't put me over the edge with workload! =)

And finally: 23 Things down and I'M ALL DONE!!!
*does happy dance*