Reflecting on LIS 724

I signed up for LIS 724 with very little expectation for what I would learn and accomplish during this short course. My opinion on technology’s place in education was very basic and based only on my experience as a student. I have not yet had the opportunity to teach in a traditional sense but as a future librarian I will most definitely have to teach in some capacity. As noted in previous blog posts, I do some teaching as a reference assistant at Dominican’s library. If you hop on chat and ask a question you have a chance of it being me! The teaching I do is mostly about how to use library resources, but I also do some research consultation. Both of these heavily rely on technology and I could not do my job without my computer open and ready to assist.  

I am lucky to have found such an amazing community of teachers and information professionals in this course with me. It is one thing to explore technology in education and another to learn with classmates through their own words on their blog posts. I could not apply many of the resources to my life and career directly but by viewing others’ blogs I could see their implementation come to life in their descriptions of their students and classrooms. I love seeing how teachers today are using these resources to get kids interested and excited about learning.  

My favorite tool that we used was Wakelet. I used Wakelet to create my content curations and really enjoyed how simple it is to use this tool. I shared Wakelet with a friend of mine and she used it to create a landing page for her wedding with links to her registry and information on the venue! I will definitely use Wakelet in the future if I end up doing library instruction work. I think it is a great tool to just throw useful links in and let people browse. Not only that I find it easy to look at which is important to me; lists of links are very easy to breeze past and not absorb but having a picture and description are much more catching.  

Being in an education adjacent career, I am excited see what students create with all of these educational tools. I think technology has a very important place in education since many things today are exclusively online, including some students! While I admit that some things are best done the old-fashioned way, like taking notes with pen and paper, there is no reason to not include new technology in educational settings. The students will figure it out on their own if we don’t introduce them to it first, so I think giving them an outlet to explore is the correct course of action. 

I am going to use the same gif I used in our first week blog because my semester is far from over and not only that I have just one more semester left before I finish my degree. I have always sprinted to the end no matter if I am running or finishing a project I have procrastinated on, I am always running down the clock. For better or worse. So, this gif still feels quite fitting for the end of this class and the beginning of the end of this degree. At least that is what it feels like.

Thank you for reading my blog! It has been a rewarding and fun experience and I wholeheartedly believe that blogging belongs in education.

Gif Source: GIPHY