Week 9 #23

I really enjoyed this class! The self-pacing was critical for me since I left the state twice for a total of 3-1/2 weeks during the alotted time-frame. I was able to get ahead a little bit before both trips and then catch up after I got back, this would have been impossible with a regular show up at the specified time and place.

The timing worked well for a summer class but it this is offered again for credit during the school year you might want to add a week at the end with no new lessons to account for all the things that come up that keep people late at work when they want/need to be home working/doing other things. It would keep help keep stress levels down.

Can I also suggest that non-librarians be allowed to take the class? This may be the case already but I not sure. I know of a few teachers who would love to learn about web 2.0 tools, to take the credit class, and to use these tools in their classrooms. Though this would take some of the stuffing out of the librarian being on top of all this and being able to show/teach the staff.

Use of many of these tools would make other professional development classes more fun and more relevant but they would need to be embedded in the class. Ann tried to get the Teacher's Choice class to post reviews to a wiki but because the reviews were also required to be handed in to another instructor either on paper or email it was a little bit of duplication of work and not many people participated in the wiki.

I had a little trouble in the beginning of the class getting the blog up and running and then posting my avatar into it. The problems were resolved after re-reading the directions and playing around a little. Of course having no experience with creating blogs didn't help but once you figure out what actually goes on behind the tabs (posting, settings, layout) things got much easier! Also, know a little html coding helped to smooth things along trying to put links ect. into posts.

I sort of wished for a little more hands on stuff near the end of the class. Though I have no idea how you would do that with ebooks and audio books. Maybe we could have been required to create a podcast and put that in our blogs. On the flip side I'm not sure I would have been able to complete everything in time if more things had been required but that is just my timeline talking.

There might be a follow-up class, similar to the library issues class that we had last year, that could go a little more in depth with many of these applications, new policies, new philosophies, ect.

I think this was a great class and I am looking forward to more in similar format and related topics. Thanks Ann and Katie!