Week 13: Final Post!

Since our last class was mostly dedicated to working on the webinars, it makes sense to discuss them now. I participated in five webinars in the past week and a half, all of which were great learning experiences for me. All of the webinars I watched were on the “Serving the Underserved” topic, and all of the presenters did a great job selecting relevant topics and creating a welcome online environment for participants. One of the webinars I attended included some face time with the webcam, which I thought was actually quite helpful for staying engaged and feeling free to ask questions. While I personally don’t like the idea of being on camera, I liked that I was able to see who was talking to me and who I could be asking questions of. The webinars also had clever ideas for interacting with participants and for displaying content.  Putting on a webinar with my group was definitely more challenging than I had initially anticipated. Thinking about the outcome of our webinar along with what I learned watching other examples have given me a lot of good ideas and strategies for what I would do differently next time to improve my own webinar.

The Fontichiaro article discusses how librarians (particularly school media specialists) can encourage professional development through structured experimentation. By using a training module that can be accessed at a self-driven pace, the librarian is responsible for the content and the learning, but the time/geography constraints of typical learning are not present. What is interesting is how this model developed in response to issues with the original way of supporting professional development in school libraries—just-in-time instruction. It certainly seems like the different learning tasks within the training module would allow for a better overall learning experience. Having someone to walk you step-by-step through a computer problem is always helpful, but figuring the problem out on your own is clearly the best solution. Additionally, the learning module seems like it would probably limit the number of future problems a teacher would encounter, as he or she would have learned above and beyond what was necessary. This model of learning would apply well to other library settings and users, as well.

Similarly, the article by Blowers and Reed offers a lot of interesting concepts and strategies for teaching professional development in the library setting. Like the Fontichiaro article, the emphasis seems to be on learning a few relevant computing competencies through self-paced efforts. The article focuses on the idea of “constant change” being a driving factor in the library-technology world. To keep up with all this changing, librarians are encouraged to learn about the four core computing competencies, which all build on one another. What I found most relevant to libraries and professional development was the learning methodologies at work here. Specifically, I liked that the authors advocated “playing” and experimentation as effective learning techniques. The methodology also seems to balance individual-paced learning with group learning, which would allow learners of various comfort levels to interact with the material in the most useful way to them.

I found the Semadeni article interesting in a number of ways—the flexibility allowed to teachers seems smart.  The Fusion model, as it’s called, encourages professional development to occur through interaction among teachers who all have individual strengths. In this way, teachers can both be mentors and learners to one another. This just seems like such a good (and intuitive) idea: encourage leaders in one area to instruct others. I also appreciated the author’s inclusion of how this type of learning environment actually works in the real world.

What I found most encouraging about all of the articles this week was the degree of interactivity and self-awareness that the learning models promote. For librarians engaged in professional development, it seems worthwhile to keep in mind that learning comes in various forms, but the learner should always be at the center of the instructional method. Librarians, as lifelong learners, also need to be aware of how they best learn.