27 Things, here it comes!

Well, it's time to start 27 Things. I first started this blog when I was following along with "All together now", the SLJ version of PLCMC's 23 Things, but then I got busy and it all kind of slipped away. This time I'm hoping to stay on track a little more closely.

So this week's assignment is to blog about the 7 1/2 habits of successful learners, particularly what is easiest and what is hardest:

Easiest, for me, is having confidence as a learner. This is fairly hard-won for me, as my achievement in school was, shall we say, mixed. I don't like being told what to do, and that includes homework, studying stuff I'm not interested in, and a bunch of other things that are important in school. Lucky for me there IS life after high school, and I've found out in the world I'm pretty adept at figuring out how to do stuff when left to get on with it. I'm also quite sure that breaking computers (particularly library computers) is very difficult, so I'm not afraid to poke at them until they do what I want them to.

Hardest was a little tricky to decide on, but for the purposes of this post, I think I'll say "Begin with the end in mind". I, like many people, am excited by the whiz-bang of technology. And I do believe the whiz-bang has practical applications - laugh if you must, but the process of color-coding my outlook calendar has been a real help in terms of getting myself organized and prioritized. Thank you Office 2007! But I do sometimes wonder about the practicality of some technologies... They're fun, but what's the end? Particularly as the technology is ever changing?

I think, for me, the answer has to be this: Right now, a good portion of our customers and potential customers are using this technology to an extent I don't even understand. The "end", for my 27 things, is to have a better idea of where they're at (or maybe where they were last month). The ideas for personal applications will come, or maybe it won't. But at least I'll have a better idea of the environment I'm working in.