Blog Reflection...

It’s amazing the way that technology changes how we experience and interact with the world around us. For this assignment, I was asked to create a blog and involve myself in the instantaneous community that follows from posting ideas and thoughts through an online persona. I had some initial hesitancy about putting myself out there in cyberspace. However, once I got past that fear (which was also heightened by this past weeks discussion on cyber security), I was able to realize that blogging is actually quite powerful.

In short, creating and maintaining a blog is something that takes effort but also allows me to declare that I have something meaningful to contribute to a global collection of ideas. And, the linking and commentary aspects of the blog allow others to validate and comment on my ideas. In the end, I think blogs are thoughtful “idea incubators” in the truest democratic sense. I choose what to present to the world at large and hope for some sort of meaningful response which is essentially guaranteed because my audience could be anyone anywhere.

I thought that the overall assignment was interesting and very helpful in allowing me to teach myself how to go about the process of creating, maintaining, commenting, and customizing real-time online content. That being said, I did have some minor problems related to the structure of the assignments.

First, I think that the overall demands of the blog assignments were too low in regard to the number of topics that we had to address. In other words, I would have preferred to blog about an array of information technologies. In retrospect, having only two assigned topics was somewhat limiting. While it was an effective experience to post on two pre-selected topics, I think a better idea is to make our postings relate more to what we are interested in researching and learning more about.

Second, I was sometimes frustrated at the amount of time I had to wait in order to see updates on other people’s sites and also, at times, seeing feedback on my mine. I think part of this has to do with the fact that this project was an assignment as opposed to a real world experience. People use blogs because they have something meaningful to say, so it makes sense that the blog project would fail to incite true passionate commentary and feedback because it’s an assignment. Instead of the current method we’re using, I think a good idea is to let students choose an interesting position, and defend it on other people’s blogs through reading and response. The point here is that people are much better at creating passionate discourse about chosen topics.

In the end, this assignment introduced me to an online practice that I would not have otherwise ventured into. Since I have gained experience in creating and maintaining a blog, I am comfortable enough with the process and have since learned the value of using blogs in an educational setting. Through collaboration with teachers, this Web 2.0 tool can be used to enrich school activities and enhance student learning.

Signing off~

Kate

Final Note on Geocaching

I'm hoping that after these past few weeks, all of you have enjoyed learning about geocaching.

As we've seen, this "treasure hunting" activity transcends into the classroom as well. Some of us, as teachers or librarians, may want to incorporate some of the geocaching activities into the educational setting. As we've learned, you can adapt such activities to make it work for a particular age level or for a particular subject (science, math, etc.). In addition, activities can be done without a GPS and still receive the benefits of geocaching activities.

Below is a list of resources, from the geocaching.com website, that may be of some interest. If you find yourself lost without having anything to do on WebCT [insert laugh] over the next few weeks (between semesters)...have a look and explore!

Articles

TD2 Into the Woods - Video

Hundreds "Cache" the Craze

Cache In on Some Surprising Valuables...

Go on Your Own Treasure Hunt

~Kate

Let's talk about "Phishing"...

Phishing has the capability of affecting individuals from various age groups, so what can be done? First, let's take a look at some of the key points that we've talked about so far this week during our group's discussion.

About Phishing:

• phishing attacks have increased over the years
• phishing attacks seek to steal people's personal identity
• scammers are using more sophisticated ways to attack consumers
• repercussions for scammers are difficult to pinpoint and enforce

What can be done?

• conduct internal security checks to identify vulnerabilities, which will therefore protect individuals (i.e. in public spaces- library, at work, in schools, etc.)
• educate consumers, students, etc.
• never respond to an email by giving away personal information, unless you are certain that the source is a valid and secure one
• keep current with new ways in which scammers phish for information

Is this something schools should be discussing?

This topic is absolutely relevant to school librarians who typically house a technology center in the library. We need to take the initiative to teach our students what to be aware of when venturing online. Librarians can teach kids by making the content more age appropriate to the audience, but also in such a way that the message clearly gets across.

I'm not a librarian yet...if any of you fellow bloggers are, have you discussed this topic yet with your students?

~Kate