Helping Teachers Teach

Many of the instructors on our campus are similar to me in age, which means that like me, computers are an add-on. Technology Immigrants my daughter calls us, as opposed to the Technology Natives that are my children. Fortunately, between my recent online education and the prevalence of Web 2.0 discussion in the professional literature (and some great experiences at my previous place of employment) I have at least a cursory understanding of how technology is being used in the classroom and workplace.

I had just had a discussion with my boss, the dean of libraries, about possibly providing instructors with a class on RSS when the college's new president announced an initiative to increase student's exposure to technology in the classroom. At the same time, the Distance Education department was announcing new Web 2.0 features they were adding to our Blackboard portal.

I had asked the dean about the RSS instruction as a way of promoting our databases as many of them offer Table of Content alerts and content updates via RSS feeds. I was hoping this might up our database useage stats by getting our faculty more familiar with the databases and endouraging more classroom assignments using them. A few days later, she came back with the idea of creating a lunch and learn introducing five Web 2.0 technologies that were relevant to the classroom and in line with the new president's technology initiative. If there was sufficient interest, we could develop more in-depth instruction as we had requests. She assigned the instructional librarian from the main campus and myself to come up with an hour long presentation that included a brief description and educational uses for Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, RSS and Social Networking (the college had JUST launched it's first Facebook page).

Before the freeze on travel money, the instructional librarian (another Mary) and I presented the program on two of our three campuses. We've had really good feedback from it. Not only were we able to help the DE department promote their new Blackboard features, we were able to put the library before the eyes of the faculty as the resource that we are. Since then, I've had two instructors approach me about helping them add new features to their classes, which I am in the process of doing. One of them wants to add podcasts to a DE class. I am allowed a free class myself each term and I'm taking an Ed2Go class in podcasting to help her do this. Another wants to embed some information literacy and copyright info into her class.

Another instructor invited me and several others to each present a class on an aspect of technology to an Early Childhood class. I chose the PowerPoint unit as Mary and I had just created the Web 2.0 presentation and I'd learned a few new tricks doing it (thank you, Mary). This same instructor had asked me to help her develop a list of subject specific library resources that her Huskins students could choose from for an essay assignment.

One of the ongoing themes in LIBS 6142 has been teacher/librarian collaboration to enhance student learning. Helping teachers teach is the major library goal that parallels helping students learn. These teaching opportunities have also been another wonderful opportunity to promote the library and its resources. I am hoping this is just a beginning.

The collaboration with Mary has been a great experience for me. She has great skill in preparing presentations that are visually interesting (she is a painter in her secret life) and she is an excellent editor. We have been asked to work together again updating some tutorials on the library web page. It will mean a couple of technology immigrants learning some new territory this summer, but I'm looking forward to it.