Reflecting on Digital Technology for the School Librarian

As I look back over the semester of learning during this course, I can honestly say that I view it as one of the most beneficial of this degree program.  Educational technology is a part of everything we do and, as librarians, we should constantly be on the lookout for new, creative, and innovative ways to incorporate technology into learning design.

Being technology literate is perhaps one of the most vital characteristics of a librarian in the 21st century.  Being familiar with all forms of social media in this day and age is imperative as it is prevalent everywhere we look.  Our students are going to dive into social media whether we are literate about its existence or not.  To better serve our students, we should equip ourselves to educate them on constructive, positive ways to utilize social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and blogs.  All of these tools can be beneficial when channeled the correct way.

I found the websites used to generate infographics to be highly useful and relevant as well.  I especially enjoyed seeing how one teacher share step by step how she taught students to wade through information and then condense it into a visually appealing product through the use of infographic creation.  I can see this tool as something highly useful to integrate into a middle school research unit.

Screencasts, YouTube, and QR codes are mode incredibly useful tools with their place in the education world today.  I definitely see myself utilizing Screencasts for teachers and students as a means of disseminating tutorials for new tech tools and beyond.  Additionally, QR codes are a great way for people to be able to access videos and screencasts.  I can also see a YouTube channel as being an optimal place to store Screencasts for future reference.

Though I did not much enjoy the comic creators, I can certainly see the value in finding meaningful ways to integrate them into the curriculum.  Being able to breakdown a topic into a minimal number of comic squares and also turn it into something humorous truly pushes students to a higher level of understanding.

Finally, I enjoyed diving further into Podcasts.  I believe incorporating Podcasts as a teaching and assessing tool could be highly valuable in the upper grades.  Once students have heard a few beneficial podcasts and familiarized themselves with their formats, there is no reason why they shouldn't have podcast production as a choice for demonstrating mastery of learning over a given topic.  I can also see this as a useful tool for book clubs to be able to create short book talks about books they have read and would like to review.

Overall, there is a beneficial place for every tool we learned about throughout the duration of this course in the library and also in the classroom.  It is up to us as librarians to assess the needs of our specific student (and teacher!) populations as we determine which tools are going to best serve our current purpose.  Additionally, we should serve a models of life long learning and continue to dream up ways to keep kids engaged and creating.