Action Plan

As I develop more web 2.0 services in my library, my action plan for this school year can be accomplished using two tools, my new library blog (for students and teachers) and my school’s wiki space (for teachers. )

I feel that blogging will be the best way for me to serve my students and extend the learning outside of the library. I will continue to post on a regular basis and advertise my blog to students and staff members. I feel that this is the best avenue for me to post information about upcoming library events (book fairs, author visits, reading incentives, etc.), book reviews, and lesson extension information. I want to continue to add author/illustrator blogs to my blog roll, as well as add additional blogs/sites of interest for students and teachers. I hope that by advertising the blog during lessons with students, I will gain a community of readers and contributors to my blog. If possible, I’d like to have guest bloggers and ask teachers to blog about books they love. I hope to involve students with the comments feature and begin deeper discussions about HTT titles and other books/library events. I will spend the remainder of the summer creating blog posts (posting in real time and delaying posts for later in the school year), adding gadgets to my blog, and generally creating a design I’m comfortable with. I plan to introduce the blog and its features to students and teachers during library lessons early in the school year and continue to reference it throughout the year. In regards to creating a habit of posting, I will include time in my schedule to blog and keep a notepad handy throughout the day to make notes of topic ideas as I encounter them. I will also link the blog to my Destiny homepage and Schoolwires account and advertise via the school newsletter.

In the spirit of increasing my visibility to staff members as a lifelong learner, I plan to utilize my school’s wiki space on a regular basis. I think this will be a great way to begin a new forum for sharing library and technology information with my staff members. It’s a tool that they are already accustomed to using, so I won’t be introducing “one more thing” to their already full plates. Like my blog routines discussed in the previous paragraph, I plan to spend the summer gathering ideas for posts and discussion forums and generally making the library section of the wiki space inviting. I can introduce the wiki during staff orientation and reference it throughout the year via staff agendas and/or emails. Since it is difficult to secure regularly scheduled meeting times with teachers, I’d like to use the wiki to post new sites or web 2.0 tools that I discover. My hope is that by making this a place to share and setting the example for lifelong learning, our school’s wiki will become a place where teachers feel comfortable exploring, and that this might lead to more face-to-face collaborations as we develop ways to utilize these tools with our students.