So as my ridiculously long URL states, I'm an EdTech Academic Librarian. What's an EdTech Academic Librarian? It's something I've made up in an attempt to bridge the gap between two worlds: educational technology/instructional design and academic librarianship.
I studied Education as an undergrad, and that's where my roots lie. In life's twists and turns, I found my way to librarianship and then, academic libraries. Now I am most of the way through an M.Ed program and am hoping to find a way to integrate my education life with my librarian life in a way that benefits myself and my students.
I'm passionate about merging educational technology and academic libraries because I've seen the successes my K-12 colleagues have had integrating technology in the classroom. It pains me to say this, but academic librarians are a bit behind the times in terms of educational pedagogy and practice. Things are starting to improve: There's lots of talk about moving from a "sage on a stage" to a "guide on the side," but it seems to be moving at a glacial pace. Technology is something academic librarians are (by necessity) becoming increasingly interested in/amenable to, so I think it is a great way to start moving library instruction sessions towards more hands-on, innovative ways of teaching.
Beyond the library classroom, I am hoping that my interest in educational technology can help me encourage higher education faculty to design innovative, exciting, technology-rich assignments that more accurately reflect what is expected of today's young professionals once they enter the workforce. There are a lot more ways to demonstrate student learning than the standard research paper!
I hope to use this blog as a place to write about my successes/failures in integrating educational technology into the academic library classroom, and perhaps as a place to review cool tech tools that I have been experimenting with.
For further reading, the blog Ed Tech Roundup (http://www.edtechroundup.org/) has a wealth of information for anyone interested in educational technology, including app reviews and sample lesson plans.
