Pictures of students

One of the important things that I think was brought up this week about obstacles we may face is that of pictures on our library website. I believe that posting pictures of students and their work will prove difficult. I think it will be important that we are careful with what we share on our website and that we respect the wishes of parents who do not wish that their children have their pictures online. I think we can find a balance between posting pictures of children and just sharing their work online.

TPACK

I really liked the post from Emily Richards this week. It was very thought provoking. I could see librarians going into classrooms just like she and her father talked about to analyze teaching styles and what come up with technologies that would complement them. This could even go as far as being a profession in itself (I don't know if there is one out there already). Consultants or analysts that went into schools to observe teaching styles and then could recommend technologies or  changes in teaching styles to become more effective could be worthwhile for schools.

Google Docs

Just wanted to make a few comments from the podcast this week. This week at work our department was talking about emailing around a spreadsheet to each other every time something was updated on our tour/presentation schedule. I asked if anyone had use Google Docs before and no one had (we are a relatively young group - everyone between 22 and 32 and all teachers/librarians), I was very surprised. Now everyone has a gmail account and we are sharing many documents. It is so much easier for everyone especially with some people working from home a couple days a week, they now have access to documents that they would have had to save or email and it is much easier to work on projects, schedules, etc. in our department.
You also mentioned something about not having a computer at home or at school and what do you do, accept it or try to change it? I think this is where dedication comes in. If you accept it, you are settling and not helping your students at all. If you try to change it, you are trying to better prepare your students for the future. This is dedication, even if you have to bring in your own computer/laptop from home to help better prepare the students. You can also look for grants for your school or donations from big companies that may be discarding their old equipment.

School Library Websites

This week has been fun exploring the different website options. I really like both of the websites that our group picked out! I am a little worried about the two group members that we have not heard from as of Saturday, I really hope they join the group. If not, the rest of our group seems really good and I am not concerned about us picking up the slack. One of our group members, Beth, did an excellent job of creating the google docs group/document and I am very thankful to her. I think this will be an enlightening project. After reading through the organizers I realized how much there really is to consider when creating a School Library website. I saved a copy of the organizer for future reference and hopefully I will remember to consider all of those items when I create my own someday. 

Searching & Communicating

This week has been a lot about search methods. We had to do an IL mini-lesson and I chose to use Jing. I wasn't quite sure how to go about doing a lesson with Jing but after watching the tutorials I was able to formulate a plan. The only thing I had trouble with was actually getting it to upload which turned out to be pretty easy. I recorded the lesson several times because with it being recorded I wanted it perfect. I never got it perfect and I hate the way my voice sounds when I listen to the playback. I thought Jing was definitely an easy tool to use and I used a similar tool just recently for work recording a powerpoint presentation about taking photos and how to take better photos of the animals for our website. This was definitely a practical application to learn how to use.