#23 These exercises took a really, really long time to do. Not being as computer savvy as many, I'm sure it took me longer than some others. But even on the exercises that were relatively simple it took time to do them thoroughly, to really explore things and feel like I knew something about them. I think the estimates of time needed that were given by the team were not at all accurate. I don't regret the time I spent, but my expectations were not properly set. I would never have been able to complete all of this at work, partly because of the amount of time involved and partly because I needed uninterrupted time to devote to it. If you do this again as a course or if some other library asks you how it went, I think it would be helpful to future learners to give them a better estimate of the time involved.

It got really frustrating at times and it was not the reward that kept me working on this--although I think it's really nice that you are offering an incentive to participate. I kept going because I really appreciated the opportunity to learn about things that I would not have known about and/or explored on my own.

One thing I wish I had known when I started this was the number of accounts I would have to set up to use various sites. If I'd known, I would have made an attempt to make some kind of a system for the account names and passwords that would have helped me remember them. Doing the exercises partly at home and partly at work sometimes left me unable to access something I wanted to work on because the password I needed was on my list at my other location.

One thing I would have been happy to see included was a section on MySpace. Yes, I already know about it and I can use it if I want to, but I don't because it is so geared to younger people it just feels weird to be on it. If I had an assignment I'd feel I had a legitimate reason to be there.


I think it would be interesting to do something like this again in a couple of years. I imagine things will have changed alot--the things we know about will have better features (or not be used any more) and there will be new things that it would be helpful to be guided to.


Thanks for bringing this to us. Thanks for your comments and all the effort you put into it. It was definitely worthwhile.