Blurring, Blurring, Ah....

Managing Technology – Yes, an assignment to create a manual section on Managing Technology for School Media Centers, due SUNDAY (Yes this is Monday!) – consumed me as I poured over the documents, beginnings, and stoppings of my writing, stops starts, confusing moments – dah dah dahhhhh – Overwhelmed.

It does get overwhelming, think of the view behind the circulation desk when you hold yourself accountable – this is not teaching anymore kiddos, this is a new realm of what can be discouraging in the research process, yet a growing and developing process.

What seems to be an endless vastness of information that can suck you dry, can also be refreshed with a new look on life.  When I entered into Digital Is, I knew about it, I heard about it heck, I visited it and almost everyone I know  in NCTE and the technology realm knows Digital Is, yet I still did not have a profile – yet LinkedIn, P2PU and others were within my practice and knowledge.  I realized the most obvious sites and aides can be unused  due to the outlandish number of resources out there and available.   However, being able to move past the idea that just using technology to use it or make one look one savvy, the same ideas apply when I am faced with this overwhelming amount of info, wanting to use it for quality and not quantity.

Yes, I might lose points on my assignment due SUNDAY (I know), but in retrospect, having a clearer mind and scope of what I wanted to do to make this easier for the next person is a feeling I can take beyond the points assigned for this project. If we can instill the same feeling of moving past points, bells and whistles, and simply grades to students, then my role as a Media Specialist/Librarian is right on track with what the 21st Century Standards require of us.  Grades have always been the carrot to lead many to the water of technology, yet, times are a changing, and the universities and institutions of higher study do not care so much of the .5’s and .0’s of a letter grade as much as wondering – ‘Can you survive and sort through the mass amounts of information to be productive and to the point?”  Ah, and there amid the many journals, articles, and podcasts, lies the answer – those few resources that you need to focus on, and use when the time allows and fits – will take you to the end goal of finding the right answers, with the right tool for the moment.

Once students feel from their instructor that devices are just that, not the end all that will solve the problem, but the tool to a variety of options, then learning amid a jungle of options begins to occur.  I think there is hope for me yet.

Thanks Digital is!