Our final project in LIS 629 was a collaborative effort to build an online educational resource which incorporated the use of at least four technology elements. We designed a wiki for book and reading promotion.
Technology Effectiveness:
For a more inviting visual appearance, we used Glogster to design the home page of the wiki. I initially ran into some problems trying to make the glog fit correctly on the page but I was able to work it out. We used Gizmoz avatars on the Student Instructions and More Books Pages to give directives to the students. We used Google Forms for the library survey and the student checklist. We provided the students with book trailers on Voice Thread which was a little tricky because you can’t upload YouTube Videos into Voice Thread. We provided a Summer Reading Blog for students to comment on the three books they were required to read and they were also instructed to comment on one of their classmate’s blog posts. We also embedded another wiki into our wiki as a tool for teacher resources. These were effective tools because they will promote student literacy.
Concepts and Ideas of Library 2.0 and participatory library service:
The social use of information and the creation of online collaboration and communities via social networking tools are vital to the development of school libraries and librarians in the 21st Century. Social networking sites like Twitter and provide valuable pools of resources and information for librarians. Collaboration is the key to develop effective PLN’s. Delicious and Library Thing are also social networking communities that allow you to interact with educators form all over the country and share key resources and ideas. Blogs are online interactive communities that provide information as well as social interaction. All of these social networking tools are crucial towards continuing education and keeping current on innovative technological methodologies.
Technology Issues:
The only problem that we can foresee with trying to implement some of the tools we used may not be accessible in some school districts because of filtering. Before trying to implement any of these tools, we would collaborate with out colleagues in the IT Department to find out which technology components our school’s network could support.
Collaboration Issues:
The benefits of collaborating was brainstorming and coming up with a variety of different ideas. We also were able to make suggestions on how to improve the content and the quality of the wiki. Some disadvantages were time constraints and communications issues but in the long room, I am happy with the completed project.
