Reflection

It' just about a week since class ended, and I have found some time to let it all settle in. The class was a terrific eye opener to the wide array of tools available to the 21st Century librarian. Its funny, I went on an interview at the end of June for high school librarian position. I was surprised that I got called in for an interview since I won't be certified until next year, however, I feel that if I had had the course before the interview, I would have been that much more knowledeable and confident.

It is exciting to get to know all these tools and to think of collaborating with teachers to help students learn. I think Microsoft Photostory can be a powerful tool; Prezi is a fun way to do presentations - it looks very cool and is easy to use once you get the hang of it. The countless others that we have looked at during the course can all be incorporated into classroom learning. I am particularly interested in Google Lit and would like to do a literature trip through Sweden just for fun and practice with the book I am currently reading. Although I don't feel completely fluent using them, I have confidence that I can learn all of them as soon as I have time to sit down with them.

One social networking tool that I have changed my mind about is Twitter. At first I thought it was a silly idea, but this morning I checked it out and there were lots of interesting tweets on it. One in particular pointed to a SLJ article on comic books and literacy for boys. This article was relevant to a research proposal I had just finished writing regarding graphic novels and their effect on literacy rates for ELL and LD students. This article may have been useful in my research. I think that the key with this tool is to follow people who will provide relevant information - so thanks for all the terrific contacts, Karen!

Well, we finished our last class today. I think I'm going to be OK. A few of us stayed late, set up our final projects and I have most of it complete already!!!Yay!! I really need to go over everything over the next few weeks and pick a few things to focus on - both for use and application. Anyway, it was a very enlightening five days. Hope everyone enjoyed it and will use this great stuff.
Happy Summer!

It's Monday, and it has been an interesting day. For one thing, we worked on Microsoft photostory, which was a lot of fun. We did a photostory on Beezus and Ramona, a book that I remember from when I was a kid. The results were pretty cool. The afternoon was a little frustrating because we were using a tool to make a home page for our wiki. The computers were getting a little funky and nothing seemed to be working right. Something that should have only taken a second was taking 10 minutes. In the end, I did not really get the product that I wanted, and I'm not sure if I can fix it. Also - bit of anxiety about the final project. But I tend to be anxious and just have to have faith that in the end I am always able to pull it out. Still, like yoga, I think it will be a humbling experience...That's all for now!

OK, this post is for last Friday's work. It was a fun day; Sue and I went out and took pictures. We went with Sue's idea for the road to learning. There was a ton of photo ops and we took a lot of pictures, not really sure of how we would use them, but at least we kept it thematic. We were a bit frustrated using our presentation tool, Photo Show, but after finishing it, we realized it was actually pretty easy. Our presentation was very corny and we got a kick out of it. The rest of the tools looked interesting, too. I figure that I am really going to have to spend the remainder of the summer playing around with all of these things until I narrow it down to a realistic repertoire. There is just SO MUCH!!!!

DAY 2

This has been quite a day. I am completely overwhelmed. I haven't even finished everything that we had been doing - too many toolbars opened, too many passwords and user names. And I'm really not sure when I'm going to find the time to go to all these sites that I have set up to get information - let alone read the information. I guess I need to some time to digest it all. But I do know from experience, that when you are learning something, it takes longer to use than once you know it. I think I will learn to rely on 2 or 3 things initially and then slowly add the rest on. Looking forward to Day 3 (after a good night's sleep!)

Using Blogs in the School Media Center

Blogs in the school media center are a great way for students to collaborate with each other and with their teachers to construct learning and to communicate. Blogs can be used to discuss classroom reading,whether it be literature for an English class or a topic from a science class, which can enhance understanding. Blogs can also be used to keep students organized and can be referred to for upcoming assignments where they can get information and request clarification for things they don't understand. A fun thing for a library to do would be to select one or two students a month to write a review of a book. This could promote reading for other students and allow students to share their thoughts about the book.