Signing Off

Well, it's that time of the year again. The snow is melting, the flowers are blooming, and my allergies are going full blast. It's also the end of the semester, which is usually a time for reflection. This has been my last semester before I go to student teach, so I have been reflecting more than usual this semester. Have I learned everything I need to before I face an actual middle school? Have I done my best to get the grades I want? Are the projects I have been working on complete?

One of those projects has been this very blog. I hope to continue to add to it as I go into real-world libraries and classrooms, but for now this is goodbye. I have enjoyed the assignment to create and maintain the blogt. I learned about a lot of technology and online resources: some that I will definitely use, such as Skype and Twitter, and others that I wasn't so fond of, like Diigo.

The assignment to create a blog has been unique, but I think it worked very well. Instead of trying out various technologies and writing something about them for my professor, I was writing about them for the world! (Okay, so I only get about 6 page views a day, but that's not bad!) Knowing myself, in the future I am far more likely to look at old blog posts that I have written than old writing assignments.

I hope I will be able to continue to find new and interesting technologies to use, and I am certain that because of this assignment I will be better prepared to start from scratch and learn all about whatever it is that I come across!

Please take my poll!

Word Cloud

I've been doing a lot of research on media literacy lately. This word cloud pretty accurately represents some of the issues relating to the issue of media literacy. Enjoy!

Podcasts

When I got married, my life changed in a major way. I'm not talking about the usual changes that come with being married, like sharing a bank account or changing your last name. After I got married, I discovered the wonderful world of podcasts.

A year ago, all I really know about podcasts were that my grandma listened to them. I thought of them as something for people who didn't like music, but still wanted to listen to something. But I was pretty bored one day, and so I decided to download an episode of a podcast that my husband often talked about, called This American Life, and from that day on I've been hooked.

Podcasts are great, because they are so versatile. Some of them are informative, some are entertaining, some are just downright silly. (Hey, kind of like books!) Listening to podcasts is a great way to be a lifelong learner, because they are a practically endless source of new and interesting information, and they are so easy to access!

In 2013, NPR did a series on American libraries: Keys to the Whole World. The series covered a range of library-related topics, from lack of funding to technology in libraries to pop culture. The focus is on public libraries, but school librarians will find discussions of issues dear to their hearts.

My favorite story in the series is an "All Things Considered" piece called Beyond Books: Libraries Lend Fishing Poles, Pans and People. As they say in the podcast, libraries are places where you can find information, and information isn't always in the form of words. They visit libraries that are thinking outside of the box, and allowing patrons to check out tools, equipment, and even humans.

The library here at Utah State University has an annual event called the Human Library, where people become human books, and you can check them out and hear their stories. I think it would be fascinating to do something like this at a secondary school, perhaps in collaboration with an ELA or Social Studies teacher.