Final Project: Library Learnin'

While I have accurately outlined my thought process and application of #IDE15ALA in my four weeks of blogging for this course, we are charged with synthesizing all of our learning into one conclusive post. What follows is full outline of my course in

Educational Technology: Motivating Students and Enhancing Learning

Educational technology is such a rabbit-hole. There are thousands of blogs, websites, TED talks, and journal articles about ways to integrate tech into your teaching environment. At the same time, there are thousands of teachers- of all grades- who bemoan the short attention span of students, who battle with personal tech in class, and who advocate for simpler teaching.

Librarians are more cutting edge than they typically think they are when it comes to being early adopters of new technology. In spite of our clunky ILSes, or perhaps because of them, libraries have pushed url-link resolvers, proxy server authentication, and web-asset management forward for years and years. The downside to that is that we tend to think students benefit only from our management of the technology instead of teaching them more about how things work and allowing students to really be in control of the tech.

Integration and Alignment (aka: finishing my assignment)

My previous post got me through question 1 of our assignment, forcing me to review my situational factors and how they integrate with my course goals. The rest of the questions stumped me, so I skipped ahead and moved through the worksheet that actually designs the course and gets down to the nitty gritty. I thought I would hate it. Turns out, the designers of THIS course knew what they were doing, because the worksheet was meaningful, applicable, and involved higher level thinking about the details of my learning module. I think part of my issue is that I am building from scratch, so thinking about learning activities, assignments and assessments was incredibly necessary, and in reality, takes a lot of time and intentional thought.  It was overwhelming to break down a library session into manageable pieces because I tend to think of it as a giant pie, instead of all the ingredients separately.

Integration and Alignment (aka: dang it)

Our instructor said in the lecture that this week of work would be the most difficult of the four. And as I look through our second assignment, I'm also looking for a way to leave the computer and go get some coffee, hoping that this post will be written when I return.

Alas, I don't think homework works that way.