This class has exposed me to new ideas and technologies, and I'm anxious to get back into school to see how I can start using them to help learners learn and teachers teach. One of the hardest things about any job is communicating effectively, and we certainly have learned many new ways of communicating! Getting people interested in them, and willing to use them, is going to be a challenge. This course has been great because we've actually experienced the benefits (and difficulties) of using these technologies. Selling them to people who haven't seen or used them is going to be trickier.
A library blog seems like a great place to start - it seems like it will give us so much freedom to communicate with the entire school community. I am hoping we can get permission to have a link to it from the school website, that's the first hurdle to overcome. It won't do any good to have these tools if no one can see them! That's a big benefit of our final project - thinking through all the steps of actually using some of these technologies in a real setting. If we can make a library blog and teachers start to use it, they may think about it as a teaching tool in their own classrooms.
I'm wondering how well I'm going to do, after this course, and after my program is over, staying on top of new technologies. I know there are many ways to do that (and RSS will be very helpful!) But then there's library journals, professional organizations, our regional library cooperative, school and professional listservs. It seems a little overwhelming, but hopefully I'll figure out how to do enough of it to stay current. Even as we take this course, things are changing underfoot! Understanding that we are never finished learning is key.
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Here's my take on keeping up. Don't try to do it/know it all. Select those topics that are the ones you feel most passionate about or are most interested in and keep up on those via RSS, journals, newspapers, etc.
Then, know that other people are going to keep up on other topics. You'll talk to them and find out what you didn't know.
One other piece to this. Don't forget that newspapers and magazines that aren't library oriented are a great place to keep up. You probably read those regularly and get useful library tech info. without even realizing it.
This has been my way of keeping up for about 5 to 7 years now and it's worked really well.
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