Finale

It's probably difficult to pick up on how transforming this course has been for me as I seem to have spent rather a lot of time whining. As I said earlier, one difficulty that was immensely challenging to me and I believe for all non-tech people,  is not fully knowing what the norm is. Many times I would be almost crying with frustration and my husband would say something along the lines of "oh, yeah, well you have to do this now - sometimes that just happens" Glitches that were immediately apparent to him were completely outside my scope of knowledge. And really, there is no other way to get that base other than time and experience - I see that as I begin to recognize "glitches." But it can be very demoralizing at times. 

However, on to the good news. I feel that this has dramatically altered my confidence and ease with the Web. At the most basic level I feel like I'm not having to cover for my stupidity any more and beyond that I'm totally loving the many fun things I've discovered for personal use (Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, creating a second blog etc.) and beyond THAT I'm excited to think about how I can use this further at the Library. I really did feel enormously proud to pull off the Flickr thing with my teen group. In creating it I was also very aware of hitting walls and making myself push through and the thrill (or maybe relief) of succeeding on my own. I know that this was not rocket science but it really was completely out of my knowledge and comfort zone short months ago and now it's not! I found again and again that if I could just push through to the mastery of the "Thing" I generally absolutely loved whatever it was. (Sometimes to an alarming degree!)

The course seems like a framework. But it's a framework where formerly there was none! I'm grateful to know of the many portals where I can continue checking out stuff - and filling in that framework more solidly. 

It's a wonderful course and I'm so glad to have taken it. Thanks for bringing it to Vermont!