Learning Commons Post 4: Can I anticipate and be ready for obstacles
This is the hard part for me. Introducing a site that is going to be used by so many people for so many different purposes scares me. I know that I want to test the site with people that I trust will be honest and constructive. I have great relationships with my staff, admin and parent community as well as my students. I would like to gather a group together that will look at the site and give me constructive and honest feedback. I will start with the technology committee that works really well together and is a good representation of the different users for the website.
The big obstacles will be :
Delegating the curation of the site between myself and my new partner ( no library experience and a new staff member and a new VP ) She is very personable, energetic and tech savvy Yeah!!!
Maintaining the site : Either weekly or bi-weekly. A decision to be made in collaboration
Making the connections between the pages: How does one page lead to another. Is the website viewer able to move around intuitively and logically and meaningfully.
Not letting the site settle into something that gets forgotten about.
Janet LIBE 477B Summer 2013
Just another UBC Blogs site
Janet, I wish I had your ability to clearly and specifically see the obstacles. It seems like you have a few challenges ahead, but nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure. Many of the library sites I’ve explored usually have a hypertext link back to other portions of the website. I have always respected the information literacy resources shared on Dr. Charles Best’s Library site (http://jcomfort.typepad.com/), and Prince of Wales Secondary School has a great site (http://go.vsb.bc.ca/schools/pw/Pages/default.aspx). Maye their organizational systems will work for you too. I know that you are tenacious and thoughtful, you’re site will be well-used, hot even 🙂
It sounds like a good idea to hold an inquiry session for invited participants to go over the conceptual basis for the site and talk about progress to date. This way, you can both provide conceptual information to the group and start them thinking along the same lines as you are, and get their feedback on how the site looks and feels as an interactive learning space. If you think of the site as a living space, a space where relationships are enlivened, and learning takes place, that is very different from thinking of it as a static space that demands to be updated every once in a while. Think of it as an essential connective space that is part of a living network of learning relationships and then see if that inspires you to foster and sustain learning relationships with the site as a connective hub.