I feel so very lucky to be taking this course at Simmons. When I was reading someone else’s post (Elisabeth’s, I think.) and she mentioned how she created a wiki for another Simmons course, something really struck me. Rutgers does not offer any kind of innovative technology course. Sure, they have a multimedia production course, and you learn how to play with flash and make pretty webpages…. oooh. That’s it though, and there are no other tech requirements besides the basic IT course (read: HTML coding – and that’s it.) and multimedia. We touched on blogs, social networking (but only to talk about censorship really), and second life SO briefly in my YA class that I don’t even remember what the assignment was, or what we learned. (Clearly, I didn’t learn much.) There are no other online options (or even on campus as far as I know…) to expand technology knowledge for school media specialists. When I read the description for this course, I jumped on it as soon as I could, and I was worried that I hadn’t acted fast enough – there were only 3 WISE seats! I was sure that other students would be dying to take this course, it seemed so innovative to me at the time! But, from Rutgers as far as I know, it was just me and MaryRose who even tried to get into the class.
So, after 3 weeks of this course, I realize that this is the type of class that should be mandatory for school librarian’s today. Yes, it’s great that I can build my own website, but really, there are programs that build webpages for you these day, and all you have to know is how to point, click, and type (and maybe upload a picture or too.) Nothing so challenging that a student couldn’t do it him/herself. Media specialists should be at the cutting edge of this technology, we should have to know technology terms, and we should be the ones pushing students into realms of undiscovered technological depths – whether through wikis, podcasts, blogs, social bookmarking/networking… there is so much.
Today I feel overwhelmed that there is so much out there for me to learn, and it never will end, I fear (and hope…) But strangely, it’s reassuring because I know that when I have my own library and I have a wiki up and running, or students doing podcasts on the school’s website, I’ll know that I’m giving them the best media services that I possibly can.
July 6, 2007 at 12:41 pm |
Agreed about the role of the library teacher. It’s important to take on the role of the pusher – the one who advocates for high-quality technology (or whatever) for students so that the students are able to do the best that they can in their learning. And, the same holds true for pushing to teachers so that the teachers can do the best that they can in teaching.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to be the pusher in an academic setting. But, the tools to make it happen are easily available. For the most part it’s figuring out how to get those tools into the school setting.
Go for it!
July 12, 2007 at 10:50 pm |
It’s interesting. I think your observation should apply not just to librarians, but to the entire teachers’ community. I was part of study on the use of multimedia in class, where one of our first observations was that teachers tend not to use the technology, simply because they are intimidated by it. Kind of a problem in our days
So i am with you on that observation.
Your blog is very interesting!