Final Reflection of LSSL 5391 01 Digital Technology for the School Librarian

  

 Reflection Story

Dear Reader,

Here is a few more details on a few of the assignments from my Digital Technology Class. Using a blog is not something I could foresee myself using consistently in the future. Learning about content creation and the strategies majority of the training discussed were about instant visuals. This is mostly accomplished through social media like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Blogs require users to want to visit only that website, rather than just casually scrolling through it in a feed. To continue a blog I would need to make it more easily seen and relevant to users by linking posts from social media to my blog.

I really enjoyed the Universal Design of Learning assignment. In Kindergarten, we cover so much of that I never really questioned any of it. I never thought about how older students (6th-12th grade) would want the same things. This changed my mindset of the needs in the library for all students. I LOVED visualizing and recreating my local library to follow these guidelines for children. The library I was visiting has not changed in the 30 years I have been visiting it. It was fun rearranging it and adding things that I know would make it great. Completing this assignment, I know, is something that will be a great benefit for my students and I.

This assignment was to show creative use of technology, is to share your reflection is through the use of digital storytelling. I typed out a story, then broke it down to pages, then used ChatGPT to create the illustrations. I used ChatGPT because this is the program that I had the hardest time with. When I created the newsletter, I did not realize how specific you needed to be, and it was a fun challenge when creating this reflection. Making sure the teacher character was consistent in every image was harder than I thought. There were times her hair color would change, but minus the eyes and the clothes changing, I figured it out. Then I used Canva to combine the images with my story.

For any future librarians reading this, I do recommend reading Leading from the Library. This was a quick and easy read. I felt seen and heard as a teacher, and there were several takeaways from the text.