Professional Development for Peers

The thought of educating others in a professional development setting is daunting. It's hard to feel like the expert in front of your peers. Even if you think you're the expert, what if it turns out that there's a secret technology whiz on your staff who is going to judge your presentation? While unlikely, there are natural fears that come with putting together a professional development presentation.

This week I chose to put together a presentation for my faculty on a couple apps and tools for visual learners. There are certainly students we will encounter who will learn better by watching a video than listening to a lecture and others who may not be great at writing but know a lot on a topic and could better show that knowledge through a video. It's not a particularly groundbreaking concept, but all four of the sites I explore in my presentation were new to me and could very well be new to the faculty at my imaginary school. I feel like the websites are also so user-friendly that they can be easily used by teachers without putting a lot of effort into learning something new with perhaps the exception of WeVideo. Even that looks pretty user-friendly, though. The teachers can dip their toes into using more technology in their classroom with these tools without having to fully dive in.

I did find that Screencast-o-matic did not work quite as well with my computer as I had hoped. I'm not totally sure of the problem, but I'm guessing my cheap Chromebook may not have the processing power to run a bunch of tabs and a recording app at the same time. There's a video I show in the presentation that does a better job of explaining what students can do with WeVideo than I could do, and each time I recorded, it caused a lag. The first recording I did started lagging almost from the start. Not ideal and no idea what happened there. Overall, using Screencast-o-matic was easy, but I do wonder if having a more powerful computer and a paid account would have fixed the rendering problems.

Here's my presentation:

Social Media Lets Me Down

As an avid user of social media, I was convinced that this week would be a breeze. I'd find a few social media accounts I liked and boom, I'd be done.

I was very wrong.

Finding quality school library accounts that I felt would actually assist me in professional development was much more difficult than I had anticipated. A lot of Pinterest posts, for example, seemed great at first, but then I realized most seemed to be teachers trying to monetize their work on Teachers Pay Teachers. I don't know why, but this feels really skeezy to me. It shouldn't! People should get paid for their hard work! But as someone just trying to get ideas, it made me pause because I don't want to be duped into thinking an idea is original, only to find out that it's sponsored or a ~partnership~. Again, nothing wrong with that, but I was really looking for more organic-feeling posts, nothing super sleek. I feel kind of crazy even saying that, but I want to see the real world, not just a fantasy school.

I do think I found some great resources. I really like The School Librarian's Workshop Facebook group. A woman posted this week about what she should leave behind when she retires, and it was interesting to see what people found useful or frustrating when they took over a job from a retired librarian. It seems to have given people a lot to think about. That's the kind of material I wanted to find - accounts or groups that make you think and consider whether you are performing to the best of your ability.

I expected to find more on Twitter. I am sure that as the years go on, I'll come across more hashtags that will lead me to accounts I find inspiring. Same for Instagram. I am excited to check out the #diversepicturebooks tag that was shared in this week's discussion board. I've started following that, since I'm always looking for new books to read with my own children. It very well could come in handy in a future work environment, too.

Creating my own social media plan was much easier. I've been following how my kids' schools use social media and how my friends' workplaces (various archives) use it, so I was able to use what they do with what I want to do to create my plan. I've also been an active user of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat from their early years, so I feel fairly confident in using them at work, as well. I think I understand the dos and don'ts of professional social media, which you won't see reflected on my personal accounts necessarily, and will be able to carry that to my future school.

Honestly, I'm kind of excited about using social media to promote my future library. Here's hoping I get a job in a school where this is encouraged!