Project 5

The purpose of Project 5 was for us to explore various Web 2.0 Tools and evaluate them.  I picked tools from different categories - social media, a form generator, and a calendar.  It's amazing what you can find out about a tool if you just take the time to explore and do tests!  I have included the link to my evaluations here.

It's been a great semester and I know I will take the knowledge I learned and apply it at my job and in future Library & Information Science courses!

Project 6

For project six, we were to partner up with a classmate. My classmate, Rachel Loria, has been in a couple of my previous courses and we have worked together and always had a great experience, so it was a no-brainer that of course I wanted to work with her! We compiled a Prezi Presentation on the 21st Century Learner and used other technologies such as Voki, Camtasia, and Empressr to complete our presentation.

Happy viewing!

Project 4

I'll be honest - at first I didn't really like Prezi, but I have been forcing myself to utilize the tool. As it starts, there's always a learning curve and a little bit of frustration, but baby steps it was and another Prezi presentation was born. That is what this class is all about after all - learning new things and applying it to your job, school, or just life in general.

Happy viewing!

Project 3

Project 3 was so fun!  I took myself away from my job and let me have my dream job as a teacher for a day!  I created a lesson plan for high schoolers taking a technology class and created a 3-week "Collaborating with Technology" Unit and included 3 lesson plans for each component of the assignment.  It was fun to be in the teacher's shoes for once and it was even more fun to explore all of the different tools at my fingertips!  I have embeded my Prezi presentation below.

Happy viewing!


What tools do you love using?  

Unit 5: Bringing Something to the Table

Recently, we have been talking and reflecting about what makes us valuable to our job - ironically enough, I just submitted my Employee Evaluation for the past year and we have to write what our duties are and what we have done for personal and professional development.  Writing out my duties, of course, makes me think hard about my job and what I "bring to the table."

I like to think I am a hard working employee - I used to be a student assistant where I work and they hired me full-time right before I graduated in 2011.  I remember feeling incredibly happy and blessed at this opportunity and slightly guilty because I had a great, steady job just out of high school when all of my friends were stressing about moving home and finding a job!  I am not one to take time off at the last minute, I never try to take the short-cuts around things, and let me tell you, I have a great response time for emails!  If it is a lengthy request, I ALWAYS email the faculty or staff member to let them know I received the email and when to expect a completion email.  Even though I don't get paid to do so, unless it is of urgent manner, I tend to read emails and respond to them after work hours / on the weekend.  It is a personal decision to answer emails and I know that it does not go unnoticed in my work and I have been rewarded for it (i.e. not getting penalized for an extended lunch every once in awhile, being able to leave work early on some days).  It makes me feel better knowing that by fulfilling these email requests, I am satisfying my colleagues and also not walking into work on a Monday to an email frenzy!

I try very hard to always be positive and not bring my personal life into my work life, which sometimes is harder than it seems!  I am constantly perusing the Internet in my downtime reading up on the technology we use and the updates or new features coming out for it.  I am also pretty involved on campus as I am the Wayne Cares - Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure co-chair for Wayne State University.  This has given me so many opportunities and I have met so many incredible people because of it on campus.  Being involved is really important to me and I found that it helped make me a better person to be able to give to others like that!

What do you bring to the table at work?  

What do you bring to the table in your personal life?  

Do you think these things make you an all around better person?

Project 2

Project 2 was especially helpful to my job.  I had the opportunity to assess an area of weakness and use all of the NETs Standards to provide solutions.  I am confident that I created a presentation that will prove to be helpful to me before the start of the Fall 2013 term.  This project really made me think about the issues and I have been exposed to and WHY they are issues and WHAT I can do to not only better myself in my profession, but to help better my colleagues and their students.

I am fortunate to have a license for Camtasia Studios from TechSmith from work, so I was able to produce my PowerPoint into a web-friendly slide show!  Happy viewing!  It is about 9 minutes long.

I should also probably activate Windows 8 sometime soon... :-)

Unit 4: A New Tool!

This week we learned about using different instructional tools to include in our instruction.  Today, I have embedded my Voki on my blog, which you can play below.


Note: If you are having issues actually embedding your Voki or other tools into your blog, make sure to switch from "Compose" mode to "HTML" source code mode - after 20 minutes of trying to figure out why it wouldn't embed properly, I finally had my AH-HAH moment!

Other tools I have used and found effective have been: Google Hangouts, Dropbox, Google Docs / Spreadsheets / Forms, Moodle, Photobucket, Camtasia, YouTube, Webkinz, just to name a few!  I love using new tools and figuring out how they will best serve my needs.