If you can’t tell, this week’s Emerging Tech assignment was to research social media and the library. Honestly, I’ve been really excited for this unit! I actually do use social media and mostly to find interesting articles (also, pictures of sweaters and food and dogs). I have always been one who can’t read enough — always with a book in hand, a magazine on the table, and an article pulled up on my phone. (Admittedly, I hate reading on a screen but I tend to search for articles when I’m waiting on something/someone, and thus, enter the iPhone.)

Our assignment for the week was to figure out a social media plan and also to annotate a handful of social media sources. I did this while watching baseball (why is playoff baseball so entertaining?!) and was so excited that I basically attacked my husband and toddler with everything I’d found when they returned from their weekly trip to our public library.

First and foremost, I’d never looked on WordPress for blogs related to the library. I think it’s because I started this blog to talk about my family and myself. I found several sources here including a blog post that I re-blogged: The Death of the Library is Easily Reversed. This blog post gave me some pause to think about what before/after school options I could offer in the library classroom to meet the needs of students.

After my foray in with the WP search bar, I moseyed on over to Twitter. If you’re on Twitter and want to give me a follow, my handle is: @themumoirs — spoiler alert, it’s mostly about sports, food, and toddler tantrums. Ah, the good life. I have been following some academic-facing feeds for a while though (not everything can revolve around Pittsburgh sports’ teams). Some of my favorites for the library classroom are: MassBook, Digital Commonwealth, and NELA (which is a general site for libraries for all of NE — I like that there are resources posted frequently for how to improve upon the library experience and I think that a number of public library ideals can be used in the school library).

I also did some researching on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Let me just say, I LOVE Insta — I find it so much more refreshing and less to deal with than Facebook. I also can appreciate the privacy features on this site. Whereas my WP and Twitter feeds are public, I keep my Insta and FB private. I like the ability to have as much or as little a digital footprint as I please.

Now, to the social media plan. I put a decent amount of thought into this and wrote mine up accordingly. One thing that I can’t stop thinking about is how to use the BitMoji app to create cartoon versions of students to use in intranet-based chats and forums. Obviously, this would be contingent on the school’s policies and tech-based options but I really like the idea of having a level of anonymity while still being tracked (student log-in/IP) so that bullying doesn’t become an issue. This is something I will have to table for later but it’s definitely something I want to explore more.

I am really enjoying everything that I’m learning in this class. I want to also play around with the different apps, digital media forms, and websites I’ve reviewed in recent weeks and see how I can embed elements into library classroom social media page. I also understand what my limitations are — as a non-youngster, I’m accustomed to using Facebook and Twitter but I’m concerned that it won’t reach young people with my enthusiasm, so I think I’ll need to reach out to the school VSCO girls and learn about the cutting technologies that the teens are utilizing.

I’m excited to continue in my tech search and can’t wait to work in a school library, where I’m able to fully (or even partially) implement my plans.