Are You There Blog? It's Me, Patty.

Blogging is one of those things where literally anyone is able to it, but the question remains: are you able to do it well? There are so, so many different blogging websites out there; more than I even realized were available. They’re usually free (at first) and you can set it up in seconds. As someone who is actually trying to get into the habit of blogging and participating in social media, I tried out a few to see what suits me best.

After checking out the options, I decided to focus on Blogger and WordPress. A great deal of the websites I reference and use to help me in my career as a youth services librarian are run on either of those sites. If they’re sites I use in my personal learning network, it only makes sense to join the crowd. Since they’re well known, they also hold a bit of credibility; I would feel more confident sharing my blog with others if it’s on site so well used. I crafted the exact same post on both my Blogger and my WordPress page to see how it felt navigating the site and to see the ultimate result.

My first draft.

Results: I don’t know which is better for me! This article gave me a lot to consider between the pros and cons of WordPress vs. Blogger. Blogger feels easier to craft and use, but WordPress has so many more design capabilities and works, in my opinion, as both blog and a content management site. I’m going to cheat and say both are great.

Sidenote: I love Tumblr. If I could communicate through only gifs and screen shots of television shows and movies, I would. In a heartbeat. The thing about Tumblr is that I find it easy to become sidetracked and waste a lot of time on silly, unproductive stuff. It’s all certainly amusing, but not really helping me learn anything—and honestly takes away from the stuff I SHOULD be doing instead. There are some exceptional Tumblr blogs and I love having a blend of different interests, and variety of postings that are all conveniently located in one space. And truthfully, This sister article to the one link above made me rethink my Tumblr activity. It is without a doubt an incredibly active and creative site. But I feel like Tumblr is often used by many for more of a personal (and somewhat anonymous) outlet as opposed to an informal professional learning network. That, and also that’s a platform for emotional, misinformed teens…. 

Literacy for the New Age: Reading, Writing and Google?

For one of my classes I recently had to read this article by Tonya Roscorla where she lists five challenges to digital literacy that school librarians face.

Now I am not a school librarian, but as someone who works with children in a library setting, many of these challenges affect me too. It’s just as much my obligation to share the importance of digital literacy as it is the school librarian’s. Every program we put on can help expand and develop a child’s digital literacy; STEM programs, 3D printing opportunities, Hour of Code, etc. Even something as seemingly mundane as “How do I open this document?” can help better equip them to be able to preform these tasks in the future.

Critically analyzing a website to check its credibility? Righteous, dude.

One quote in particular struck me in the article. “While we say students are digital natives, digital natives don’t exist.” I think that’s what makes advocating the importance of teaching digital literacy so hard for some to understand. In addition to the concept being hard to define, we’re used to children picking up on certain aspects of technology since they were born into it. For example, we see babies swipe and operate the iPad like a pro all the time. (Side note: my parents have been swiping computer screens and laptops for years. It doesn’t make them a “digital native.”) But there’s a huge difference between being able to simply use technology and knowing how to use it to its full potential.

Social media is such a big aspect of many people’s lives. Whether it’s used personally or professionally, like it or not, we are all rapidly expanding our spheres of influence. To me, digital and media literacy go hand-in-hand. Since we are both consumers and creators in this digital media market, it’s important to really understand what we have at our fingertips. We need to help guide the younger generation on how to use these tools, just we helped them learn how to read and write. And this, as all important things do, takes time and practice.