Final Reflection

Looking back, I wish that I would have taken this course earlier in my MLS program and not as my very last class.   I learned so much!

Out of all of the assignments, I chose three as my favorite.  First, I enjoyed the cartoons and comics assignment the most.  It was fun learning about the three different tools we used -- ToonDoo, Pixton, and MakeBeliefsComix -- and creating our own strips.  In second place was the Animoto assignment.  I had heard of it before but I had never created my own video.  The third one that I liked was learning and using Screencast-O-Matic.  This is a very practical tool to use in education.  I plan to become more proficient with all of these tools and I will definitely use them in my lessons.  I know students would be fully engaged with any assignment using these options.  So, I would also choose these three as the most beneficial for students.

By the way, I did also enjoy using audioBoo for my podcast and learning about Infographics and creating one myself.  Looking into the online book communities was also useful.  I had never done that before.  Using YouTube for educational purposes is also a good option.

I am not much of a social media person, but being in the MLS program I had to open accounts with Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Facebook, and Tumblr.  Although I don't really use these tools on a personal level and was even reluctant to open every single one of those accounts, I do see how they can be used for professional reasons.  They are a good way to connect with students, staff, and parents and promote the library and the different activities we do.   All of these social media sites are fairly easy to use.  If I were to pick just one for professional use, I would probably pick Twitter to send out announcements, pictures, and videos.

On another note, I found the PEW Internet website incredibly informative.  They have done so much research on so many different and important topics.  For my Mining PEW I chose several short reports and presentations because there were a lot of topics that I wanted to read about.  I liked how the website is organized because this made it easy to search.  As an educator, I am sure that I will use this website often.

For some reason the most difficult assignment for me ended up being the Journal Readings.  The difficulty came in finding good articles from the appropriate librarianship and technology journals.  Sometimes I would find an article, but I just couldn't get into it so I would look for another one.  On a positive note, I do feel that I became better at refining my searches when I used the SHSU Gresham Library website.

Lastly, this blog was an interesting experience for me.  It's the first time that I had to submit assignments using this format.  Knowing that others had access to things that I wrote did make me somewhat uneasy at first as I tend to be quite private in my personal life.  However, I do see a good use for blogs in education.

Overall, I enjoyed learning about all of the different sites, tools, and options that are available to us on the Internet.  I know that I will definitely go back and become more familiar with many of them and use them in the near future.  I'm certain that they will make my library lessons more fun and that students will be more engaged.