Reading Review #1- LIB 477B 63C
The past 2 years of school have been a strange combination of everything has changed and nothing has changed. Our day-to-day routines of teaching and dealing with students feel the same as always, but also add in the distancing rules, handwashing, sanitizing, and mask reminders.
One of the main issues that I see arising in my position in the near future, is a lack of time. My position is supposed to allow for 2 days a week of ‘Library Administration’ time, to allow for collaboration, program development, and the maintenance and general running of the library. (Book processing, etc...) Lately however, this time has been taken as I am often pulled to teach in a classroom due to staff shortages. I am hopeful that this problem will be short lived, but only time will tell. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is fixable with digital technologies!
Another issue that is impacting my program goals is a lack of working technology. I would love to integrate more coding, and digital literacy skills into my time with students, but our hardware is aging and there isn’t enough of it. In a school of 450 students, we have one cart of 30 laptops (which are always fully booked out in classrooms), and one cart of iPads that has dwindled down to 14 working devices. I can have more frequent access to the iPads, but I need to use them for collaborative projects or centers-based work. I would like to explore how I can allow students to create and produce digital projects with minimal devices.
I would also love to be able to reach out and connect with our families more using social media and digital means. Before current safety restrictions were in place, I often had parents drop in with their children after school to return books or ask questions, and they were able to see book displays and some of the things we were doing in the library. With parents not being able to come into the building at this point, I would love to help create a connection online and show families what is happening in our space.
Some of the ideas and keywords that I would love to be able to explore are:
- Literacy advocacy and promotion
- Building school culture
- Family involvement
- Collaboration with teachers
- Coding
- Curriculum enhancement
- Inclusiveness
- Leadership
- Creativity (STEM, Makerspace)
- Digital tools (green screen, etc…)
One of the main things that I hope to get out of this course is ideas from others. I have these ideas that I would like to explore, but I feel like there is a lot more out there that I haven’t even heard of or considered for my space!
This is a good first post. I appreciate the narrative structure and the personal, reflective tone. You have identified a wide range of topics for further reading and research. You may want to consider narrowing these down as you complete part b of this assignment. Connecting and learning from others is one of the main themes of our course. I am confident that you will have many new ideas to implement as a result. For your next post, you may want to include some multimedia elements such as images, links, or videos. These add another layer to your post and further enhance the reading experience for your audience.
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