Reflection

I admit, at the beginning of the semester I looked at this assignment and thought it would be too easy for me. I consider myself to be pretty adept at technology and a lot of the things listed I had already done before. I was very pleased to discover that no only did I manage to learn some new things, but I also got a refresher on some of the things I had done before but not for a while. I also really appreciated the opportunities I had to help my classmates out with some of the things they were struggling with. It was very satisfying to me to be able to help them solve some of the problems they were having, even when I didn't initially know how to solve them myself. I feel like this experience has given me an insight into what it might be like working with some of the teachers at a school. I have realized how much I really enjoy using technology in an educational setting and how useful it can be in regards to being a teacher librarian.

 Just to summarize I thought I would write down some of the things I plan on using once I acquire a position at a school (interview tomorrow!! cross your fingers for me!).

 Twitter: This is probably the one that has surprised me the most. I have always thought of Twitter as a facebook's more vain counterpart. It never really seemed like something that would be useful or enriching. After exploring a little I realized what a benefit it could be especially when it comes to collaborating with other librarians. I really liked discovering the #tlchat, which I plan on keeping up with as well as participating in.

 Diigo: I have already started using Diigo! I love love love being able to highlight webpages!! It is so convenient and helps me remember a lot more information. I also really like the tagging and sharing tools and it seems like that will be a great way to share information with teachers.

 Skype: The idea of using Skype to do author visits is awesome! I can't wait to try and organize something like this. What a great tool to help kids find a deeper connection with the books they read. I also really like the idea of using the group chat feature to collaborate.

 I have really enjoyed doing this project and look forward to using the skills I have gained to improve myself as a librarian.

Survey

What an awesome tool this is!! I imagine this would be incredibly useful in gauging attitudes of teachers, administrators and students in regards to the library as well as collaboration.

Analysis:

The majority of the people who responded said they liked science fiction and dystopian fiction. They gave me some good ideas of some books to read this summer!

Podcast

You can find the podcast I listened to here. The podcast I listened to was about blogging in the classroom. A junior high music teacher told about her experience using a blog to further discussion in her classroom. Ever since I read about blogging on The Mighty Little Librarian's blog I have been thinking about it and trying to find out more about it so this podcast was perfect for me. She talks about how it was a great way to continue the conversation they were having in class to another venue. She also talks about how people who won't speak up are much more willing to in a an online environment. Another thing she talks about is incentivizing the kids with extra credit points or making the blog an assignment. A great thing about this podcast was that she gives tips for implemenation at the end of it, which is kind of what I was looking for. She also gives a link to her blog so you can see what she did (you can find that here). It is really interesting to see the way the students interact with each other and how she moderates the comments. This podcast was a great way for me to see how exactly blogging could effectively be used in the classroom.

Online Video

I watched a video on 21st Century School Libraries. It was very good and would be a great way to introduce to a faculty what exactly Library teachers can do for a school. In the video a high school, junior high, and elementary school librarian all talk about the different ways they are involved in their schools. As expected each librarian regardless of the grade talked about collaborating with teachers, implementing technology, and helping kids find books to read. One of the things I really liked that the middle school librarian said was that she often times helped the kids with technology. I think a lot of the time when I think about providing technology support in a school I think of the teachers when in reality the kids will also need help using certain technologies. It was nice to be alerted to that. Another thing that I really liked that they said was the emphasis that the library was no longer a quiet zone. All of them talked about how much activity went on in their libraries and how there were always kids doing things there, that is what a library should be! The elementary school librarian talked about reinforcing what is going on in the classroom with activities in the library. We talked about this a little bit in Jadene's class and I think it is such a great way to support the teachers. This video, although not terribly informative, was fun to watch and interesting.

Wordle

I created a wordle from my book blog!

Twitter

I have to admit, I have always been skeptical about using twitter as a library tool. I completely and totally understand the ways it can be used to collaborate with teachers, administrators, and other librarians, but I have had a hard time accepting that students will willingly follow and respond to tweets from their school librarian. Pam, Brad, Craig, and I were discussing this a little at class on Tuesday. Their ideas were that if you provided some sort of incentive for following the school library's Twitter feed it would prove motivational for students to pay attention to it. I suppose that would work the same with a library Facebook page. I have started following a number of school libraries in the surrounding area as well as the twitter feeds of the blogs I added to my google reader. I have also added some of my classmates library Twitter feeds. I think that Twitter is a great way to share links and information as well as a really awesome forum for figuring out problems in your library and how to address them. One of the ways which I saw this in action was through a blog post by The Mighty Little Librarian about if doing self check outs in her library would be a good idea. She asked other librarians how it was organized and executed in their libraries and got a better idea of how it would work in her own. Another really cool thing that is going on on Twitter is #tlchat, which I assume is teacher librarian chat. Searching using this hashtag allows you to see all the posts that librarians have tagged. It appears that every week they pick a topic for discussion and then tweet about it to each other! What a great way for librarians all over the country to collaborate with each other.

Thing 14 Blogs

I had a lot of fun exploring the different library blogs on the different blog lists. The first blog I decided to follow is called Mighty Little Librarian . This middle school librarian does all sorts of awesome things in her library and documents them on her very thorough blog. Some of the things I noticed that she blogs about are book reviews , library programs, and collaboration. She has some really awesome ideas for how to get kids coming to the library and how to work with teachers. I loved her "Who is your book crush" display in her library for valentines day. The second blog I decided to follow is called Venn Librarian: Reflections about the intersection of schools, library, and technology. She talks a lot about the implications technology has on school libraries as well as education. There also seem s to be a lot of professional development resources on her blog which I really like. One of the blog posts that stood out to me was about learning commons, which was very helpful as I am in the final stages of creating my virtual learning commons for Stillwater library. There are some really great ideas on her blog, one of which is a mother daughter book club. I am interviewing for a middle school librarian job on Monday and it is relatively close to the school my mom works at, I think having our schools do a mother daughter book club together would be so much fun! I guess I never thought of library blogs being a good resource and this has opened my eyes to the idea that following blogs is a great way to not only keep up on recent news but also get great ideas for library programs and collaboration.