End of Class 

Well, I made it to the end of my class!! I learned so much and feel that this has been one of the most useful classes that I have taken. Below I have a reflection about what I learned and also a comic strip to represent some of that learning. Enjoy!

Final Reflection

 

         When I first signed up for this course, I was extremely excited to learn about various ways to incorporate technology within a library setting. Although it is a little embarrassing to admit, before this class, I was not very knowledgeable about how to use technology with students. So, I was hoping to gain experience and understanding about different types of technologies as well as the best ways to use them.

          I am happy to say that I did learn quite a lot about many fun technology applications from this course. During the completion of the assignments, I started to become a little more comfortable about what types of technologies I could use in the classroom or library. Starting with the first assignment over feedreaders and blogs, I learned exactly what a feedreader was! I had never heard of one before, but now I know that using one can help me stay organized with relation to all the websites, blogs, and social media sites that I follow. Additionally, I became aware of some great blog sites that I feel will be quite useful to me as a future librarian. I found some of the blogs on my own but also discovered some interesting ones from other students’ blogs that I ended up bookmarking.

          The next two assignments took me a little out of my comfort zone as they required me to sign up for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and to create an infographic. Before this class, I was only on Facebook, and to be honest, I am not very active on the site. So, getting onto Twitter and Instagram was somewhat daunting. I do think that it will be good for me to know how to use the sites and to have a professional account, so I am glad that I now know more about them. I especially like knowing how to utilize the sites to reach parents and students and to advocate for a library space. With regards to creating an infographic, I was able to become familiar with different sites that help one make an infographic. I learned how an infographic can be used to show information in a fun way, and I believe that as a librarian, I can help students utilize infographics for various lessons.

          The next lesson over YouTube, Animoto, and QR codes was quite interesting. I have used YouTube for looking at videos and most recently creating videos but haven’t really followed any library channels on the site. Learning about ways that students can create videos with relation to books or the library was fun and educational. I really feel that students of any age would love to make videos! Using Animoto was a little difficult at first because I have never created a book trailer before and was new to the site, but I do think that I could utilize this site a lot as a librarian. It would be great to have book trailers on a library website to advertise new books in the library.

          Next, the lesson about creating comic strips was something that I am very excited about. Using three different sites, I came up with three different comic strips. Each site differed in the options it had, so each comic strip was unique. I can totally see students doing this with ease and enjoying it. I thought of all kinds of ways that a comic strip can be useful such as writing a summary of a story, showing a retelling of a story, representing a vocabulary word and its definition, etc.

          One of the last lessons included creating a podcast. I had created a few podcasts before this class but was not really familiar with doing a podcast with two hosts. I had to collaborate with another SHSU student, and we did not live close to each other. Luckily, a site called Podbean allowed us to do a podcast together from our separate homes. Within a library setting, students could create podcasts about books they recommend, or they could pretend to be interviewing an author. Either way, they would have fun.

          All in all, this course proved to be extremely interesting as well as informative. I have gained skills that I will use in my career as a librarian as well as many ideas about how to use technology with students. Technology is a big part of education in today’s world so I am grateful that I was able to participate in a class where the entirety of the information was about technology.