7 ½ Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2: Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3: View problems as challenges
Habit 4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6: Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7: Teach/mentor others
Habit 7 ½: Play

Of these habits I think the easest for me would be Habit 4 - I do feel I have confidence in my abilities to be able to master new technology. I often feel I don't take advantage of new technology because I choose not to rather than because I am not able to.

The hardest habit I think is the first one making and meeting goals, I find I either make them too vague and wide ranging so I can't tell if I achieve them, or on the other hand too specific and feel I miss the big picture. So as a result I have chosen to include both specific and general goals for this exercise.

Goals :

To keep up with technology
To introduce one new service for patrons using some of these new technologies
Do more with less and let technology save me time
Ensure my work experience remains stimulating and I enjoy my work
Complete the 23 things each week not to fall behind

Toolkit :

I think this need will mainly revolve around software which I will need as new technologies are introduced. I am hoping that it will not be a problem to download this software however from past experience I seem to have a lot of problem accessing new software since I have had a new computer. I will see how this goes.

Family research

I have been researching my scottish family on my mothers side, the Hendersons came from a small village in Scotland called Auchtertool. I have managed to find Church records from this village dating back to 1708 and through this I am hoping to confirm relationships and fill in some gaps.

To find this information I have been using the Latter Day Saints website, Family search. This is a great resource for several reasons, one is that it is freely available on the internet, another is that it is worldwide (although USA is most represented) and also it goes back a long way. Some other sites like Ancestry.com do not seem to go back very far mainly because it relies so much on the census which means before 1840 there is little information.

http://familysearch.com