And a great time was had my all!

In addition to being able to close my door for a few hours every week, I really enjoyed the variety of readings and presenters-- and the presenters seemed to care what we said AND responded! I've also told many people how much more meaningful and practical the readings became when I could talk to the organizers, other participants, and presenters about random thoughts I was having, questions I had, problems I saw. It was like being in grad school again, but without the books, tuition, and bureaucratic nonsense. And, I must admit, I really liked having this blog.

Personally, I can't see myself jumping into the SecondLife pool, nor can I envision setting up a Facebook or MySpace account. It may be that I can't overcome my own preconceived notions of thos programs being for the young'ens, but I also think social software tools are only useful when they are useful-- at this point they aren't. However, if I've learned anything in these five weeks, it's that I never know what I'll suddenly find indespensible.

Professionally, I think blogs, wikis, and Flickr will be most useful; though I think that being able to consider the full spectrum of these tools, even if we don't use them, and share our knowledge with our users, is quite useful.

I was really surprised how engaged and, I feel silly saying this, how social everyone was. I feel like I made some real connections with people and have an great initial base of professional colleagues I can call on for help when I need a sounding board for feedback. I was excited by the variety in projects, which is great because then I don't have to try it all myself, I can just glean from the successes (& failures) of others.

The pre-weeks and first week of the class was really overwhelming. I felt a bit like I was drowning in information and didn't really know where the lifeboat was. Maybe this, in reality, is just the process of jumping into the proverbial pool of knowledge, but I have heard others suggest making the course a bit longer. Once I figured out where the OPAL classroom was and how to chat, things went a lot smoother.

Now I don't know what I'll do with all my free time-- I guess work on implementing my proposal. Thanks everyone!