The purpose of this Blog is to create a forum for the flow of Information related to Technology when sharing Library information to the public. It may also be used by Library Professionals as well as future Library Professionals as the need arises to Learn, Grow and Teach Library Technology to Others.Here, we aim to teach technology to others in through this blog. As communication needs evolve, so does the media needed to do. However, new ways to communicate also come from this change and this shapes how we all use new devices, applications, and social media. As libraries have long provided the public with the means to access information through books, computers, WiFi signals, ebooks, videos (analog and digital) and other means to come, they are on the forefront of educating the public on how to use all this technology. We intend to be part of this on-going process. We also aim to serve library staff who need to learn and teach others how to use library technology to others.
Members of our blog team come with various experience with blogging. Some of us are very familiar with Blogger and Wordpress and other platforms like LiveJournal or Squarespace, while some of us come in with little to no experience with blogging at all. While we often assume expertise is needed to teach something, learning cans coming to understand the process is an important step to teaching something to others. This will be part of the process of this blog as we can apply our areas of expertise in some posts and learn new subject matter to teach others. The latter is especially important as the means to communicate and access information constantly evolves.
Setting up this blog is where we’ve all been learning regardless of how much experience we’ve had with this platform or others. In my case, I used to keep a blog on Blogger over a decade ago, so I felt familiar enough with the platform to get started. However, it didn’t mean that I didn’t have anything to learn.
Getting this blog set up was the easy part. I accessed Blogger through my Google account and I clicked “New Blog” to create it. I gave it a name, a play on technology and pedagogy. I then selected a template to give the blog a look (which was subject to change).
I did have to update my knowledge as navigating the settings was different than before. It seems more streamlined, which makes things easier once I got to know it. Finding the layout and getting accustomed to using “gadgets” was a learning curve even if I understood it in terms of Wordpress’s widgets. I set up some of these boxes in the sidebar for Contributors (initial setup), About Teaching Techagogy, Blog Archives, and Library Links.
In updating my knowledge of Blogger, I found myself taking some time to get aquatinted with the “Adding Authors” function under permissions. While this was fairly easy, I’ve never done group blogs, whether as a member or administrator. With inviting other team members to join the blog, I understood that having Google accounts would be necessary to use Blogger, so I made sure I had other team members’s Google contacts before inviting them. Once they joined, I changed their roles from Writer to Administrator so they could then become familiar with our blog and modify it accordingly.
We’ve been documenting most of the changes so far on this Google Doc. This reflects understanding of the platform along with what team members decided would change and improve the blog with its topic, from sidebar widget choices and content to aesthetic overhauls. As this blog evolves, so might these features. Overall, this blog is just one part of how we are learning the technology that we teach others how to use.
- Shin
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