Moving Forward

Last January at an ALC staff meeting, I shared about how shocking Maria's situation was for me. It really brought home how dependent on each other we are. I was very cognizant of our individual and collective fragility.

It seemed to me at that time, that as ALC staff, we were spending huge amounts of time on the bureaucracy and documentation of our program and I recognized that was not the reason that many of us choose to work in adult learning and upgrading. I said that we needed to find new ways to make our jobs more fun and efficient so that we had more time to support our students, thus increasing our job satisfaction. I shared a quote about how too often we don't get to enjoy the satisfaction of a completed project because we are so busy moving onto the next task that needs to be done.

Later in January, I was introduced to the world of Web 2.0 and then after sharing with the rest of the Library's management team, Nadia emailed me the Michael Wesch video from youtube that is in week 9 of our Library 2.0 project. Management Team began to discuss the merits of doing something similar to Helene Blower's Library 2.0 project and that's how this blog started.

When I began our Library 2.0 project nine weeks ago, I didn't have any set plans. I knew that we needed to understand Web 2.0 and that there were probably some things that we could learn and then implement in ALC to make staff tasks easier.

I had no experience with many of the Web 2.o applications. I hadn't blogged before. I didn't know about google-docs. And I didn't understand what RSS was at all. I had tried to read about it but I just didn't get it. (Doing it hands-on made a huge difference for me.)

As I learned more through the Library 2.0 activities, especially during the past few weeks, I realized that the activities shouldn't just be for staff. We need to incorporate modified modules into our program so that our students can participate, learn, create and share.

We need to do this:

1. to generate contact hours by enhancing and encouraging active participation.
2. to make the documentation and bureaucratic processes more efficient so that we can spend more time actively supporting our students.
3. to provide equity of access and service delivery to our students.
4. to ensure more student "ownership" of their learning and learning goals.
5. to provide students with real life computer skills that are needed for both employment and quality of life reasons.

IMO (In My Opinion), Now having these new skills and knowledge, it would be unethical to not change our program delivery significantly by actively redesigning so that Web 2.0 and its various applications are embedded in the ways that we support adults to upgrade and improve their writing, reading and math skills.

I look forward to working with all ALC staff at our September 7th staff meeting as we begin to collectively wrestle with Web 2.0 and its implications. Our journey of discovery continues...