Activity:

I applied CSU ThinkSpace as a platform to create an online space for Christian children to explore e-resources. Please click on the menu bar (Hello Christian Children and Young adults) in my Thinkspaces or click the link below to see its contents:

(https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/inf406growinginchrist/hello/)

To make it simple, the title of each resource is displayed on the main page so that children can click straight away. I have tried to offer a variety type of different resources. For example, I provide recommendations for both of the physical book and e-book to satisfy different users’ need. As this website is particularly designed for Christian community, I also included information about the missions that children could participate. In addition, an interesting bible story is sited from YouTube so that children could learn the story of Easter in a fun way.

Notes: As this is just a demo website, I did not disclose the registration procedure. If it can be used in real life in the future, I will include contact method and membership information.

Reflection:

• Importance of providing e-resources

Physical libraries are ideal for children and young adults to learn and communicate. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has tremendous impact in altering people’s habits from reading physical books to exploring virtual resources. There is little influence of the digital libraries when the physical sites are forced to shut down. As International Federation of Library Association (IFLA, 2020) predicts, many people will “continue to access library services remotely”, because the digital libraries could provide a wider range of resources and services” (p. 9). Therefore, it is important to construct and develop the virtual collection so that children can keep their reading habits.

As a result, librarians are expected to provide a variety of online resources to satisfy children’s developmental needs. It is one of the librarians’ professional roles to connect the young readers with digital materials (Cragg et al., 2020, p. 27). In order to perform this responsibility, children librarians need to develop their computer skills and learn additional knowledges. Thus, I use Thinkspace as a tool to design an online space for Christian children and parents.

• Professional development

CSU ThinkSpace is an online platform for publishing posts and creating websites. It is a wonderful place for practitioners to learn web design techniques and to improve their professional analysing skills. At the beginning, I thought it would be very easy to handle because I have applied it to post blogs in my previous subjects. But actually, the entire procedure is much more complicated. As I proposed to design a comprehensive online space with various contents and information for the young Christians, I need to create and decorate the web pages, as well as providing useful resources. The “Getting Started Guide” is very helpful in explaining every item of the menus (CSU Thinkspace, 2022). With its assistance, I am able to do many tasks, such as adjusting the settings, distinguishing between “pages and posts”, and editing the media links etc. It provides an all-inclusive instruction for the new users.

In addition, as the web pages are created for children, the information’s quality and usefulness are significant. Although my previous degree in the Master of Divinity enables me to gather trustable information in relation to Christian education, I still found a gap between my imagination and the reality. I need to dedicate a lot of time to analyse and evaluate all the resources so as to present proper contents. It is a time-consuming project which requires a lot of contribution. It demonstrates that a superior digital library must involve many efforts and frequent updates.

In summary, this learning activity helps me to develop my skills in generating contents and decorating webpage. Although I only present part of my ideas due to the limitation of my time and energy, I still find it valuable to my entire career.

References

Cragg, N., Agosto, D. E., Abbas, J., & Hernandez, A. (2020). Librarians as media advocates: Public library website advice for parents. Children & Libraries, 18(4), 26-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/cal.18.4.26″>10.5860/cal.18.4.26

International Federation of Library Associations. (2020). IFLA Trend Report 2019 Update. https://trends.ifla.org/files/trends/assets/documents/ifla_trend_report_2019.pdf

CSU Thinkspace. (2022). Getting started. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/getting-started/