First post: What's this blog about?

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.