New Habits form slowly

I just read an article in the New York Times about creating new mental habits; about pushing and stretching ourselves into new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking. That has certainly happened over the course of this year with our participation in this project.
We have been introduced to so many things that at times seemed overwhelming. We can't absorb everything at once, neither do we adopt every new tool that comes along. We need to find what works for us on a daily basis. As a leader in the district, I also need to be aware of what is out there so that I can introduce it to other media specialists so that they have choices to see what works for them.
Everywhere I turn in my professional reading, the Web 2.0 resources we have learned about are popping up. I feel good that I have not only heard of them, but also have had some experience with them. Jean and I participated in a Minitex webinar this week entitled: Teaching Old Services New Tricks: Integrating Web 2.0 trends into everyday services and tools. Again it was good to see how different libraries were using new tools, and gave me more ideas of how I could share this with Minnneapolis media specialists. In the April issue of Minitex Reference Notes, I scanned the article that reviewed some of the sessions at MPLA and felt validated by one of the presenters on Web 2.0 technologies who stated that we need to find the tool that fits us and our needs.
The simple podcasting that we did in April will be a good jump start for next school year as Minneapolis has just installed two new podcasting servers, one for student use and another one for district wide staff development. So podcasting will be an area that I will want to become more skilled in. The new Mac operating system makes it so easy that kids and teachers should take to it readily.
This entire MILI experience has been invigorating and at times overwhelming. I am so excited about the possibilities for next year and getting more Minneapolis media specialists and students involved. Thanks Ann and Karen for your excellent presentations.