The Penultimate blog entry - A reflective synopsis

I find myself in a slightly different position to my fellow students in the course I am undertaking on education technology. I think they are all lecturers or teachers with a full time workload of teaching for an entire semester, whereas I am a librarian whose teaching load is considerably different. I teach as part of a team, presenting free information literacy classes to students, classes requested by individual lecturers and 6 weeks of information literacy to a bridging class.



Therefore, I rarely have the same students twice to get the most benefit from many of the technologies used during the course.


However, that being said, I’m always on the lookout for new technologies that can be utilised in the course I teach and in general for the dissemination of information literacy to the wider student community.


Blogs are an obvious candidate, and the library does have a blog that is updated regularly by a rotating roster of staff. It contains information about database outages or updates, announcements, and entries that are of a generally informative nature, such as a recent one about Banned Books Week, or librarians throughout the ages, or resources on the subject of chocolate. The only problem I see with a blog is that it could be difficult for a newcomer to the blog to read previous entries for a specific topic e.g. how to find journal articles, since the information could be quite far back or have become outdated since first posting. There is also the issue of regular posting to keep the content fresh and up to date, as so many blogs become abandoned after a while.


I have harboured an idea for using Wikis as a general library tool. Something students could post their tips and tricks to, updating when something new is identified of use. In my mind, I would start off with staff posting our instructions, and then open to student contribution, perhaps moderating or addressing some student entries. In my dreams this Wiki would become an evolving tool that students would find easy to follow and understand.


Learning Management Systems such as Moodle are a real boon to the educator and student. The amount of information and resources that can be made available through them is almost limitless. As a student, having all of the course requirements, readings and resources is so handy. As an educator, being able to provide aforementioned information, as well as spur of the moment information is invaluable.


I also found online quizzes to be equal parts delightful and a trial. The time it takes to learn how to create a quiz online almost makes up for the amount of time you might spend marking a quiz offline. However, the knowledge and skills are an investment that won’t necessarily diminish over time. I would like to be able to upskill my abilities with PowerPoint to be able to write the code to incorporate Visual Basic and create a self marking quiz, however, I fear that being a code monkey is beyond my abilities, and hopefully I will just be able to rip off *ahem* I mean, modify some one else’s code to incorporate into my own quizzes.


Of the other technologies investigated, Podcasts, Google Earth, online image editors, Flickr, file hosting and slide sharing, I feel they have a place, but I’m not sure where in my particular circumstances. I see something like Flickr as being useful for a web presence promoting the library. Podcasts I see similarly, a way of promoting the library. I can’t see voice only podcast as being useful for instructing people on how to construct a reference or search databases as in many ways they are visually dependent.


It has been enlightening to see how others in this course would be able to use many of these technologies, and I have found myself considering that ‘technology A’ might have a use for ‘Person Z’.


I had rather hoped to have a more robust experience ‘conversing’ with my fellow students, but few of them found their way to my blog and left comments. Either that is an indictment on my writing, or there wasn’t much to say *shrug*. I did however enjoy leaving comments on my fellow students’ blogs, either encouragement or (hopefully) helpful comments. It did make me realise though, that having a comment left made one realise that others were reading, and it made me want to check for more comments, and write more entries.


Just in closing, there is so much out there on the Internet that keeping up is difficult, let alone being able to use it and utilise it. I wonder if I would have been able to keep up if I wasn’t already interested in this area, and had some small experience – which is kind of funny, because back in the day (high school that is) computers and I didn’t like each other very much, but maybe that was me and Basic. Nowadays I’m fascinated and want to explore and be on top of the newest lastest thing. Maybe that isn’t all you need, but surely the willingness to be told and then go play goes a long way to figuring out how to use it for teaching and learning.