Reflective Comments-Information Management in Schools-SU Course 661

This course was a nice overview of various aspects of management in the library field. I enjoyed the guest discussants who were invited to join us. They provided insight into the library field. The volunteer plan assignment was pertinent as the instructor allowed me to write a policy for the student volunteer helpers in my own library. The group project allowed for collaboration regarding the building of a behavior management policy. I was able, during the course of the project to explore the behavior management policy in my building and now feel more knowledgeable on this topic.

Reflective Comments-Secondary Practicum- SU Course IST 972

In my practicum experience I accomplished a number of goals which included: teaching a literacy lesson incorporating an on-line program, using various collection development tools to create a historical fiction list related to curriculum, exploring editing software, using the Noodletools citation program (this will be especially helpful as I have purchased this program for my school), attending a curriculum development conference/workshop and expanding my knowledge concerning inventory. Networking was a huge part of this experience and I have gained a colleague in the field.

Reflective Comments-Survey of Telecommunication and Information Policy-SU Course 618

This course was a good overview of various policies that affect libraries and information fields in general. Through the use of a group collaborative writing process we discovered various aspects of public sector information, not only in the United States, but around the world. In another group writing effort, we explored a trade institution (ALA). It was challenging to do these large scale writing projects via distance education but it was a good experience to have had. I especially enjoyed the YouTube assignments in which classmates and myself shared short videos connected to discussion topics.

Reflective Comments-Library Planning, Marketing and Assessing-SU Course IST 613

This class consisted of creating an immense planning, marketing and assessing document for a library program or service of our choosing. Many, many details of project planning were incorporated into this project. The host librarian I worked with, the librarian at our district high school, did not get deeply involved in the project but was available for questions.

I chose to develop (not implement) a program called "Readers and Reviewers" or "R and R." It is a voluntary program where students use VoiceThread technology to create multimedia book reviews and then comment on them. After delving so deeply into the project, I realize that I'm not so sure secondary students would want to participate or have the time to do so. It might be a good pilot test for the program to try to encourage participation and adding of book reviews by students to our current circulation system.

I struggled a lot in this course. This project was very detail oriented (something that doesn't come easy for me) and extremely time consuming. To be honest, I can't see how anyone in the library field would have time to plan something out ahead of time to this much of an extreme. I can see doing this for a very large or costly program or service that might be implemented, but the process is not very practical for school library programs.

Reflective Comments-Information Technologies in Educational Organizations-SU Course IST 611

There were three major projects in this class. The first involved a partner and I exploring a Web 2.0 technology, Facebook. We collaborated on part of a class wiki to contribute information, explain how to use this technology in an educational setting and developed a tutorial using Jing to explain its use (other members of the class were assigned different Web 2.0 technologies). Just doing the wiki was a new experience for me. I can see definite educational uses for collaborating on projects and contributing to learning as a social process.

Another project involved website evaluation. Using various evaluation tools and input from two other adults, I synthesized various aspects of a real website. In completing this project, I learned how much I have to do on my own library website! Information learned will help me as I continue to develop my web presence.

A final project in this class was a collaborative technology project of our choosing. Two gals and I explored the databases we currently have at my school. We put together a wiki with screenshots (we tried using Jing tutorials but district technology would not support this nor could the wiki support such large files) so that I can share this information with the staff and students at my school. I will be presenting at an upcoming faculty meeting.

In this course I learned that there are soooo many new technologies out there. I was asked to join a good number of them that I will probably never use again. The exposure was still good though, so that if any of my staff is interested in using them, I will at least be somewhat familiar.

Reflective Comments-Motivation and Information Literacy-SU Course 663

Learning how to creatively motivate students while teaching information literacy skills was a key component of this course. In addition, creating motivational goals and assessing such motivational techniques was addressed as well. While learning objectives are, many times, easily assessed, motivational goals are not necessarily as easy to evaluate.

Learning about how to motivate students is important so that students stay engaged and involved in their learning. Activities such as brainstorming, games and using technology are all highly motivating. Giving students choices in which project to create and presentation methods for a project helps to increase attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction (ARCS model).

The IMPACT model was also introduced in this course. This models increases information motivation through providing purpose, knowing the audience, and including appropriate and interesting content through motivational techniques. Keeping these items in mind when creating lessons plans is of the utmost importance.

Reflective Comments-Information Resources: Users and Services-SU Course 605

References service and resources were the main focus of this course. Topics also discussed included reader's advisory and reference service evaluation. Different types of reference queries and reference interviews were examined. An interview with a reference librarian and five hours of observation at a reference desk were completed and brought insight into various types reference work. A lesson plan involving reference skills was created.

Projects in this course involved extensively examining on-line and print resources. Researching these resources required analyzing aspects such as. scope, coverage, and reliability. In depth study of databases was extremely useful to me as I will be studying my school's databases, deciding whether or not to keep them and examining other available databases to see if they are a good fit for our building and its curriculum.

Readers' advisory, also a component of reference work, involves providing a patron with suitable materials appropriate to their wants and needs. There are numerous resources available both on-line and in database format to assist a librarian with this. Using such resources assists the librarian with this important task.