The Beginning of Blogging:

Okay, I admit it freely: I did NOT think I would enjoy blogging for this course.  Nope, I had all kinds of resistance rise up in me.  I have tried blogging before, about 10 years ago, when I was teaching abroad and I enjoyed it.  But for some reason, I have never approached it in my professional life.  I guess I assumed the market was saturated and I’m new to the library world, so what do I really have to say and who wants to hear it, you know?  That is my negative mind blabbering on about how much I am not a blogger and never want to be.  HOWEVER!  Ahem, however, after the first post I remember saying to my husband: “shoot, I like blogging!” and I do!  It has been a learning curve for sure, but I enjoy writing and I found it was a very satisfying way to amalgamate all of the research I was doing.

The perks of blogging, as it see it, are as follows: it helps me to organize my thoughts and explore all of the new information, it gave me a sense of voice because I knew I was writing for other people to read, so I let my sense of humour shine through and it was so helpful to be able to read other members of the cohorts blogs.  At first, I was worried that I would compare myself to them too much and feel like the blogging rookie that I am, but it was actually a really rich learning experience.  I thought it was really cool that everyone was coming to the table with different ideas and being able to dive into their expertise and research helped me to learn and to refine my own scope.  All in all, blogging was a very beneficial learning experience that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Key takeaways:

My key takeaways are firstly, that I have so much still to learn.  Secondly, that I knew next to nothing about how digital libraries are being used in the developing world.  What an enormous topic!  I had a hard time wrapping my brain around all there is to know there, and that topic, unfortunately for me, fell on a really busy and difficult week.  As a result, I don’t feel like I gave that week the attention that it deserved and, as I believe I said in my blog or one of the comments, that topic could be its own entire course!  I suppose at a graduate level, it probably is.  Maybe I’ll venture there…one day.

All of that said, it has been such a gift to benefit from the other cohorts learning over these past few weeks.  Their posts have inspired new directions for my research to take, have grounded me when I felt overwhelmed by the scope of a topic and have stretched my imagination of what is possible in the digital world.  Credit is due to the following:

Shawnese for introducing my to Buncee and sharing the beautiful posters she has been creating.

Robert, our resident IT expert, for reminding me that as I navigate this expansive landscape I am first a facilitator and not an expert so as to continue to learn along side my students and colleagues.

Megan for the inspirational use of Book Creator and Stop Motion.  I have gone back to those examples many times already and would love to create a Stop Motion Studio in the library space.

The idea of #bookdeserts from Nicole.  Her post on Digital Devices made me look at access and equality in a new light and gave me a deeper understanding of the challenges we as librarians face. Connectivity remains an issue and a barrier for many families, so I am encouraged to continue to seek out those organizations that are doing the difficult and very important work of reaching into communities that need support to connect to literacy tools and helping to bridge the gap for many children and schools around the world.

Moving forward:

The overall understanding that I am coming away from these past 5 weeks is that I want to be more creative about how I can get the books into the hands of the kids, be they physical books or digital.  All of this information and new knowledge has stretched my imagination beyond what I thought was possible, but it all means nothing if I can’t distill it into something that is practical for me in my responsibilities as a TL.  I can feel my focus going from the vast expanses of the ICT universe and coming back down to earth centring on me in my little school library that serves 300 children.  How can I put these technologies to use in way that I can feel good about?  To some, it may seem like I am thinking small, but as my husband would quote Star Wars (and he does, A LOT)…”these are your first steps…”.  So my plan is to start being more visible to my school community through digital means such as making beautiful posters through Buncee and Canva.  These tools make me feel organized and in the know.

Works Cited

Gaiman, N., & Riddell, C. (2018, September 6). Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell on why we need libraries – an essay in pictures. The Guardian. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2018/sep/06/neil-gaiman-and-chris-riddell-on-why-we-need-libraries-an-essay-in-pictures