Instruction

Instruction: Here, there and everywhere

One of the cornerstones of librarianship is that we need to be able to teach what we learn and share information with everyone from colleagues to the general public. I considered the information literacy courses that I took here at the iSchool among the most useful classes that I took, simply because I desperately needed to develop a theoretical basis for those skills while working in any library.

No matter the type of library, there will be people who are unsure of how to do something. For the most part, any instruction or teaching is casual and on a face-to-face basis. I recognize that this is not an ideal situation, especially if one needs to impart a skill to a large group of people. Therefore, I felt it imperative to take specific classes that dealt with learning and teaching skills.

In a class on instructional strategies I went through the entire process of developing a class, from documenting the time it would take to train staff and develop a class plan, to delivering and evaluating the finished product in the form of a polished website with accompanying handout. I then further enhanced my knowledge of information literacy by planning a series of information literacy classes for a made-up library system.

This knowledge was extremely practical, as I have already had the opportunity to recently give a presentation to my colleagues at King County Library System, outlining some pertinent information I had just learned through the Information School. You may view the completed power point presentation here and accompanying handout here, although I am still working on a voice-over of the presentation.