As I reflect back on My Life in Computer Technology, exploration and discovery have most often been driven by the desire for the application - exploring Macintosh programs in order to create lesson plans to engage inner city 7th graders; learning HTML in order to give a museum a web presence; following scanning best practice in order to preserve and provide broader access to primary source materials.
From past experience, then, I know that the discovery process can be challenging and frustrating. What drove me to Learning 2.0 was the support and encouragement of the library system and the chance to have fun learning about new technology while accomplishing a performance objective. This journey was not application driven since I wasn't aware of many worthwhile uses for the technologies involved.
Some unexpected favorites were YouTube (surprised that there was so much of interest to me) and LibraryThing (surprised that I would like something that sounded a bit like cataloging.)
I learned that even frustrations might have practical applications in helping customers. Last week a customer came to the information desk wondering if we knew why Yahoo wouldn't accept 21014 as a ZipCode. Since I had encountered the same problem in trying to register for Flickr, I was able to tell him to use another ZipCode. Who Knew?
Even though I had to take this journey on my own time, I would be enthusiastic about embarking on another similar journey. Technology applications are dynamic. It's fun to see how they go.
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