LIBE 477 - Inquiry Blog #2: Developing my ICT Skills and Pedagogy

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TL Captain's Blog. Stardate 2020.291


Inquiry Blog  #2: Developing my ICT Skills and Pedagogy



I know that Twitter is a very popular way for educators and education experts to share information and connect with one another. 

I am on Twitter, but it's not something that I check everyday like Instagram. I tend towards the visually appealing Instagram, as I find Twitter to be very dense (even though the snippets are so small). There is just so much to scroll through, so much coming at you, so much to weed through, and so many links to check out. I never feel like I have the time to engage with it properly, and when I save things "for later" I never go back to check them out... one of my biggest technological failings. 

I have a personal and professional Twitter, and I think that I need to clean out my personal account or perhaps just switch to the professional one, as my personal one is too full of (American) politics, news, and arguments and I find it exhausting. I also find the tweets that people "like" and the ads to be a bit much in my news feed.

With that being said, I feel that Twitter has so much to offer TLs and educators. It's one of the best ways to keep up to date on new pedagogies, lessons, strategies, technologies, apps, and cool ideas that I do want to make it part of my practice. The way I plan to start, is to begin by posting more to my Twitter account about what is going on in my LC when I get one. I love to create content, so I think that will be a good way to get myself (and my students) engaged at first, and then move on to connecting and exploring new ideas shared by others. When I do take time to go on Twitter, I always find interesting articles to read and explore, so I want to spend more time on there sharing and learning.

One thing that I have really enjoyed during this course is using Feedly. I find that the ideas shared on blogs are engaging and the format is appealing to me. I am drawn to blogs as they provide real life, usable examples of lessons, apps, topics or strategies that the bloggers have actually tried and critiqued! I plan to curate a professional blog list that I follow on Feedly (and Twitter if they post their links to there), to grow my ICT skills and pedagogy.


I will need to figure out how to juggle my time on Feedly and Twitter once my diploma is finished because I know that I want to continue with my blogging, and posting my blog posts to my Twitter will be another way to make those online connections and network with colleagues. I'm hoping that my fellow students will continue to blog about what they are doing in their learning commons or in their classrooms (and post those links to Twitter!) so that I can continue to read their explorations once class ends. 







Comments

  1. Alison MackleyOctober 21, 2020 at 10:30 AM

    Linnea

    I completely agree with you about the information on Twitter being too much. I used to use Twitter for entertainment. Most of it was laughable actually. Since I moved to the library, I have transitioned my Twitter feed away from the personal and into the professional. I stopped following a lot of things and began to follow names that I was discovering in my classes. Finding the time to stay on top of all of that is a lot, but as my diploma is nearly finished, I hope to be able to devote some of my time to it, instead of school work. Blogs are great sources for information, and I know that WordPress has the ability to follow blogs, and you can view feeds in the feed reader without having to view an external site. I find this really useful, as it keeps all of my feeds in one spot. I also added RRS feeds from each of the Orca blogs so I can see what you all posted without having to leave one site. I recently found

    https://www.helloteacherlady.com/blog/
    https://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/ and
    https://www.librarygirl.net/

    I really enjoy all of these blogs and they have lots of fantastic ideas. You may find something there too.

    Alison

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TL Captain MurrayOctober 21, 2020 at 1:44 PM

      Hi Alison,

      Yes! Social media management is time consuming! I just need to sit down and clean house. I think it's also hard when I'm feeling overwhelmed with work, to want to go onto social media during my "relax" time at home and engage in more work related things. I think when I'm back in the library that will be much more enjoyable, but after all the prep and report cards of a regular classroom, the last thing I want to do with my hour of me time is read about new strategies for my math class. During Pro-D time on the other hand, I'm all over it!

      I LOVE the Daring Librarian. I saw her speak at a Pro-D event one year and it was fabulous. I'll check out the other ones! Thanks for the recommendations! I also love the idea of having the RSS feed on the same page as your blog. Going to another site does make it one more step, but if you're already on your blog then you can just check on other posts as well! Thanks!

      Delete
    2. TL Captain MurrayOctober 21, 2020 at 1:58 PM

      Update: Blogger has the ability to follow other blogs too!

      Delete
  2. CaaityOctober 22, 2020 at 9:47 PM

    Linnaea, I connected with what you said about blogs being more engaging than Twitter. A lot of times when I am scrolling through Twitter it is pretty mindless and I am not paying a lot of attention. However, I have been finding that using Feedly to organize my blogs for this course has made it much easier to organize and keep track of them so I am thinking I will keep going with blogs as you suggested as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownOctober 23, 2020 at 5:36 AM

    Hi Linnea, I agree with you when you say that you find blogs to be a good resource for ideas, provide real life, usable examples of lessons, apps, topics or strategies. It's always useful to have someone provide ideas that have been tested. I appreciate the information and I find them to be a big time-saver in terms of figuring out the most efficient way to go about a lesson or strategy. I appreciate Twitter for the great articles, links and insightful comments from respected educators but my preferred method for ICT is using Blogs. If you can find one written by someone who shares the same level as you and with whom you connect in terms of goals then Blogs can be a great resource for growing your teaching strategies and pedagogy. Here are a few Blogs that I found to be great if you are a classroom teacher or working as TL out of the LLC.
    Sal's Fiction Addiction
    http://salsfictionaddiction.blogspot.com/
    Tinlids
    https://www.tinlids.ca/
    Madly Learning
    https://www.madlylearning.com/

    Kathleen W

    ReplyDelete
  4. D.McNeeOctober 23, 2020 at 8:24 AM

    This is a good post that outlines strategies for using Twitter and Blogs to grow your PLN. For your next post, you might want to do some outside research to support your thinking as well as provide links to outside sources and a works cited. Adding some additional research to your reflection will further enhance your post.

    ReplyDelete
  5. learningtoLibeOctober 24, 2020 at 10:50 AM

    Linnea,
    Thanks for this post. It sounds like you have really honed in on online networking in that you have both a personal and professional Twitter account. I just joined Twitter as part of this course and quickly started following some key authors, illustrators, and publishers as well as my local news networks (CBC, etc.). What my feed has turned into is a very news-heavy feed where I quickly catch up on what's going on, but because the news handles are posting so much more content, the few posts by my literacy network are lost in the mix. Do you have any suggestion of awesome library-focused Twitter handles I should start following?

    Jenny K

    ReplyDelete

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