This post, #7 of 8 will be a short post, given that the other posts are soooo long. (I can hear you cheering!)
What is the potential for the future of an organisation with which you are familiar?
I have learned a lot from this course, more than I thought and I’d say that it should be a required course, rather than an elective, as it definitely nutted out the finer details required for having a safer online presence both personally and professionally. While the ‘digital footprint’ was covered in ETL523 (Digital Citizenship), the how to’s and wheretofor’s where not as clear as they were in INF506 (Social Networking for Information Professionals). I can also see how I am now much better equipped to safely navigate social media and utilise it as a tool to improve the learning experiences of my students, build a community of practice with staff and improve connections with local and global societies.
What impact might the future have on us as information professionals?
Certainly, I now can clearly see the value of building social capital for my students, the school staff and the community and having social media and communication plans and policies in terms of saving the world from complete destruction and violence in such a way that I hadn’t seen it before.
It is my hope that the value of having a teacher librarian in schools will be increased, given the global need for information literacy in our society at present, not just digitally but in all social media.
Moreover, as an information professional, my immediate future entails a 2000 word assessment. Ciao!
I agree- I’ve gotten so much out of this course as well, and it should be required. I think what we’ve all learned from this course is that using social media should be a mandatory task for libraries, given the benefits of the social capital that you’ve mentioned. However, it is not always seen that way and staff/time allotted for it is not given in many situations. I am planning to take what I’ve gained from this class to justify spending more time on our library’s SM platforms, and to present as PL to my local librarians network to help others see the value of bringing SM into their promotion plans. I found a lot of value on the how-tos and wheretofors, as you’ve also mentioned.
I’m jealous, I don’t have a library nor school in which to implement what we’ve learned. I’m interested in this network you’ve mentioned. How did you join / start it and what platform do you use? I have joined a few MS Teams and Yammer groups with the NSW DET but haven’t yet found a way to connect the librarians in my area.