My Strengths and Weaknesses in Technology

As an educator, I have several strengths where technology is concerned. First, and I believe, most importantly, I am not afraid. I don’t mind doing something wrong several times before I get it right. It’s OK if I press the wrong key and I have to start over. I’m certainly not afraid I’m going to break the computer or equipment. I’m always ready to try something new, even if it doesn’t work!

I’m comfortable navigating the internet. I know how to do refined searches so I can find what I need. The amount of information at my fingertips amazes me. When I was in college, the internet was still just a gleam in Al Gore’s eye :). I have embraced e-mail, Google, Wikipedia, and blogging. I developed a web site for my neighborhood mom’s club which has several pages, tools, and embedded links. I can grab video clips or still photos from the internet to enrich a lesson. From way back, I’ve been proficient in Word and Excel. I’ve taught my own kids how to create and edit files for their school work. Finally, I’m familiar with entering grades on-line, as opposed to “bubbling” that we did back in my day. Weekly, I check on my own kids through their school district’s on-line grade book. These capabilities will help me enhance my lesson content and deepen students’ interest in their classes. I think it would be fun to develop a web page for a particular class where students could chat about assignments and always have access to notes and information presented in class.

There are a number of areas of technology where my knowledge is lacking. First, I don’t really understand the terms Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. Luckily, however, this class has given me the opportunity to get a whole book on the subject. I’m sure once we cover these units, I’ll feel much more comfortable with the terms and what they mean to educators and librarians. I also do not have a working knowledge of HTML. When I created my own blog, I used a blog template, because that was all I knew how to do. Since then, I’ve discovered web sites that allow you to copy their HTML code for little “extras” that I can add to my blog. However, I don’t know how to create these myself. A class or book on HTML would be very valuable, and enable me to customize a web site or blog much more easily. Finally, I’m not familiar with any student-friendly search engines. I would like for a student to be able to search for a term and not inadvertently end up with a link to an inappropriate site. Perhaps filtering software might mitigate this problem, but I’d like to look into how best to facilitate a student’s search for information. I’m hoping it will be covered in one of my SLIS classes!