Week 1: Learning Habits and the Lifelong Learner

Howdy folks!

Well, I'm getting off to a bit of a rocky start! For those who don't know me, I'm deaf, and apparently I've been missing some things during the lunches...like what we're supposed to be doing! LOL (read: laugh out loud)! So, I'm trying to get all caught up! For our first "assignment", we are supposed to watch the lifelong learning video and give our feedback on the easiest and hardest of the habits for ourselves, they we are supposed to create our own Learning Contract. So, let's get started!

7 and 1/2 Habits...

The video (located here) lists the following 7 and 1/2 habits of successful lifelong learners:

• Begin with the end in mind (i.e., developing goals, and I imagine STICKING to them! LOL)


• Accept responsibility for your own learning (i.e., actively pursue knowledge and don't just expect folks to hand it to you)


• View problems as challenges (this means mind change for most!)


• Have confidence in yourself as a learner


• Create your own learning toolbox


• Use technology to your advantage


• Teach and mentor others


• Play!

I find lots of "easy" things for me to do on this list, I'm always setting goals, or mini-goals in order to achieve a bigger goal, I've always accepted responsibility for my own learning and have plenty of confidence in that, I use technology to learn things consistently and I teach what I learn (aka, "each one teach one"). The two that are hard for me are play, which I'm talking in the context of free time, just having fun away from work, away from school, away from ALL my research projects, etc. I just don't have much time to play. "Play" in the sense of messing around with technology and learning it, that's different, that's easy for me. The hardest for me is viewing problems as challenges.

I'm a pessimist by nature, so if something goes wrong, I get a "doomed" mentality automatically. The past couple years I've made great progress in this, but I feel like I still have a ways to go...but I'm getting there!

The Learning Contract

Next, we needed to make a "learning contract" with ourselves. I'm putting mine up here so all y'all can see. I decided that for this series of brown bag lunches, I want to look at how Web 2.0 can help or hurt communication for the deaf and blind. "Web 1.0" was a Godsend for us "deafies" who have a difficult time communicating verbally, but there have been a few Web2.0 things already I've come across that leave me (and other deaf folks) out!

Goal: How do web 2.0 tools aid the deaf and/or blind? Or do they provide a bigger hindrance than web 1.0?

Obstacles: Could be that web 2.0 is really too knew to assess disability accommodations accurately. Could be that since I’m deaf, I may run into problems with accommodations.

Toolbox: Access to the internet. Feedback from someone who is blind (my old roommate!) . Feedback from someone who is deaf (ME!).

Resources: Not sure at this point. Any ideas?

Path to goal:
1. view “syllabus”
2. think about each weeks assignments and discussions and how they can relate to disability accommodations.
3. Get feedback from ex-roomie

Check in: I will come back to my learning contract each week of the lunches to see how it could be revised.

Sign here: [this is me digitally signing my learning contract]

Well, that's it! Let me know what you think!

So what's this blog about anyway? Huh???

Hey y'all.

It's me, your friendly neighborhood library clerk/genealogist/historian/archivist! I'm creating this blog for a work assignment...sorta! LOL The State Library of NC, as well as other NC state agency libraries are doing a "Web 2.0" brown bag lunch series. We are following along with the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County's Web 2.0 training blog entitled "23 Learning 2.0 Things", which they began in 2006. (http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com The point is to get librarians accustomed to the Web 2.0.

I also plan to use this after the exercises just to talk about things related to work and school, etc. after we finish in May. Every week or so will be a new blog related to this brown bag lunch series, and my thoughts on that weeks particular assignment.