Happy Still Sort-of New Year!
Last month I wrote about trying to get caught up in monthly reports for 2011, when all I could think about was what I wanted to learn for my job in 2012. I said I’d compile my thoughts for a few weeks and then let you know what areas of interest made it on the list.
I kept a running note and then went back and sorted out the ideas. Not surprisingly, the categories are a pretty good reflection of what my job consists of right now!
I wrote this initially as one post, but it was too monster, so I’m splitting it up over the next few days. Today is Teaching & Training, and Tech. Come back tomorrow for Storytime & Programming, and Literacy, and Thursday for Children’s Literature!
TEACHING & TRAINING
A big part of my job is to help develop and implement youth services and storytime-related training for our staff. This year we’ve been challenged to create as much online & self-directed modules as possible, to lessen the strain that in-person classes can put on the floor schedule. So I’m interested in catching up to the rest of the world by investigating remote learning tools, but also in being more deliberate in researching what makes for a good training session in the first place.
1. How do you write a great lesson plan?
2. Read more about staff training and best practices for adult & continuing education
Everything I know about teaching I’ve learned on the fly from great mentors, including my boss and my husband, and from just jumping in the deep end of the pool and doing it myself. I want to back up a little bit and read more about planning & lesson design.
3. What are the components of effective webinars, for live and recorded viewing
4. What are the components of an effective podcast/vodcast
5. Explore tools beyond PowerPoint and Keynote for creating videos/more dynamic presentations
If I have to create self-paced, online tutorials, I really, really don’t want them to consist of one wordy slideset after another. What are the tools I can use to mix it the presentation a bit? How can I foster interaction with the material when I’m not there in person?
TECH
This category is related to Teaching & Training, since these are the actual tools I want to learn to help me with those goals.
6. Learn a webinar software
7. Learn Pixelmator to create my own clip art
I used to have Photoshop, but no longer! My husband found this program for me instead & it’s time to get to know it. I want to create my own printables that I can share with storytime providers so I don’t have to worry about copyright!
8. Learn how to do the markup to create an ePub document.
Because why not? Maybe it would be cool to provide information about early literacy in this format to our community. I like how it could be more accessible this way, in terms of being able to change the size of the fonts or having the content read aloud by an ereader.
9. Investigate tools for reading, managing, and notetaking with PDFs/online articles/blog posts
I hate bookmarks; I could never convince myself to use Delicious or Google Bookmarks well. And I’m starting to lose track of which great article a particular fact or stat about early literacy was from. HELP!
That’s my start! Come back tomorrow for more list! What’s on YOUR Curiosity List?
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