Blog Intro for LLED 463

I have continued this already existing blog for my final assignment for another teacher-librarian course, LLED 463: School Library Resource Centre Programs. My main purpose in creating this blog is to have a user and reader friendly way to reflect on my practice as a beginning teacher librarian.  As teachers, we know that powerful learning can happen via reflection for our students, so I think it is important for me as an educator to model this. Sometimes it is difficult to absorb what you are learning all at once; taking a break from the topic and reflecting on what it means to me and how I will utilize it is important. Throughout this course we are learning and discussing several different topics such as: social justice issues in the library, the role of the library and teacher-librarian in the school, online learning resources, powerful literature and strategies and print resources for students. I like the idea of taking the theoritcal and turning it into the practical.

            Another reason I have created this blog is to show others; namely my colleagues, (but also others outside of the teaching profession such as parents) what exactly the teacher-librarian does and why this is an important person for every school to have.  This is advocacy, really, and an important way for me as an individual to promote my job and profession. We were asked to reflect on articles on education to do with Web 2.0 tools, as such, this is largely what I will be blogging on in my following entries. 

            I decided to use the blog format because out of the choices we were given for this assignment it was the one I was the most familiar with; I had already created this blog for another class and it seemed appropriate to expand a tool I was already working with rather then start from scratch.  Blogs present a simpler format for my two main goals, reflection and advocacy. I also use blogs in my teaching with students and have had great success and insight reading my students blogs.

            I haven’t really had any major challenges or surprises so far as I was already familiar with the blog format, but at times I suppose certain class topics can be hard to relate to for practical reasons such as my lack of time at work for special projects or “extras”.  At times, maintaining a consistent blog schedule given the demand on my time was challenging. I have learned that professional reflection is extremely beneficial to learning and should be given priority.

            This article outlines some tips for successful blogging which I believe are worth considering.  I especially like the tip regarding picking a weekly, monthly, etc. schedule for blogging and sticking to it consistently. One day I would like to maintain a school library blog that outlines current events and reflective practice in the library of the school I am working at. For example, I might blog about an array of topics from new books in the library, to my experiences at a TL conference to author visits to articles on TL advocacy. I would also like to include visuals in the future. I would recommend sticking to a “doable schedule” and making the topic of your blog entries a relevant as possible to my readers.