School Library Web Presence Webinar

School Library Web Presence Webinar:
I think the first speaker was probably the most informative for me. However, I did miss her name. What I liked about her was the fact that she showed only the sites she found most important, listed a few reasons why, then moved on. Her explanations were easy to follow and I could see myself implementing a few of them in my classroom the soonest. We’ve heard about Google Docs before, and I want to say it was in the last webinar we watched. Each time I see all the possibilities it makes me want to jump on there at that exact moment and start lesson planning! I really need to look up that map we saw last time. I jotted down a few of her personal websites that I plan on start following, like her FB and blog, Book, Bits, and Bytes. Livebinder is a site that I plan on checking out for both my class and personal use. It seems like my information is in several different places, and it’s never the place I’m working at at that point in time. If I’m at home, then the sites I need are saved to my desktop at school.
Carolyn Swift made a statement at the beginning of her presentation that stuck with me, “You have to believe you have a reason to be on the web, or it’s not going to make a difference.” She then went on to prove she believes in her web presence. I like the fact that she changed her website into a blog. Hers was very nice and clean looking, something that I would like to one day do with my own. I’m taking it one step at a time right now, and changed my newsletter into a blog form, we’ll see how the administration and parents respond to that before I change everything! I missed the title of the article she wrote, and I’d like to have it because of the list of widgets she provides. I love widgets, I think they add fun to webpages! One thing left me wondering about what she said though, is a professional FB page really a good idea?
About half way through Barb Jansen’s presentation I wrote a note to myself asking, “Does this woman have a life?” I think what prompted me to ask this was the fact of how available she makes herself to her students. Don’t get me wrong as a student, being able to go online and ask the librarian a question about homework sounds fabulous! However, as of now I dedicate so much of myself and time to my job, that extra little bit might not be for me. Instead I would like to offer the sites and resource for the students to be able to find themselves. She also does this, after teaching the lesson to the students she puts the lesson on her page with everything available to them. Jansen said this was in case a student was absent that day, but more importantly if a student felt a little overwhelmed, and needed to look at the information later or when it applies to an actual assignment.
Out of all the people I was most excited to hear from it was Buffy, the Unquiet Librarian. However, her presentation left me a little like feeling I just watched an infomercial advertising the use of LibGuides. Like she said though, a lot of the things she was planning on talking about had already been covered, so I’m hoping that’s why she didn’t have many other things to talk about.