Leonard Branch

I have been volunteering every week with the wonderful children’s librarian, Elzbieta Krawczuk, at the Leonard Branch of Brooklyn Public Library since July 2019. Primarily, my job is to assist and often lead children’s craft and activity programs, although I help out with weeding, pulling books for holds, and creating monthly book displays as well. Volunteering has been an excellent opportunity for me to learn how librarianship really works in action, and developing first hand experience working with young children. The photo above was taken from an all day open house event the library had in September, where children had the opportunity to take part in activities like face painting, “tattoos”, sing-a-long storytime, and all children were allowed to choose a free book to keep.

Before I took the class the Technology of Information, I had a mild case of technostress, in that learning and using new technologies caused me anxiety, and I avoided it as much as possible. Even if it was a fun creative program I wanted to learn like Photoshop, I would put it off, unless someone was there to teach me. The most important learning experience of this class for me personally, is that technology is understandable and usable, and that I have increased confidence in my ability to teach myself new computer technologies.

For example, its accurate to say I came into the semester with a minimum of computer skills. But now I know how to make a website, I know how to code with html and css. I know what a VPN is (a virtual private network, that encrypts your data and hides where it is coming from), and I actually understand why cybersecurity is so important.

I learned how to make interactive creative projects with coding, like the Homework Excuse Generator, and an online video game in Scratch that people can actually play. Creating those projects with computer technology was more fun than I expected because there’s a lot of immediate gratification, more so even than in traditional art forms like painting or drawing. Making the videogame in Scratch was my favorite part of the course. It was really fun to make the characters come to life, and using the program was like working a puzzle, literally and figuratively. Putting the puzzle shapes of code together to make scripts to make the sprites move, and then trying to solve how to arrange them in loops so they would repeat an action enough to make it walk where you wanted etc., was challenging. There was a lot of experimenting, putting different pieces together until it worked, but you could watch it immediately as you were working on it, which was incredibly satisfying.

But almost more importantly than learning the software and web authoring programs, in completing the assignments of the class, I taught myself some basic skills that make learning and using new technologies manageable and less stressful. For example, when using an unfamiliar program, I’ve learned don’t panic, I can do it. Be calm and things will go better. If an application or webpage is not working, there is usually a simple solution; and if I’m stressing, I’m probably not going to see it. For example, I was so stressed in the beginning of the semester when we were learning html with the Mozilla Thimble program and making our first web pages. My links wouldn’t work, and I was kind of freaking out, thinking I can’t do this, I’m following the directions exactly, but I’ll never figure it out. After some trial and error, I learned that its all about looking at the code calmly, and its generally something as minor as having pasted in two sets of quotation marks, or a leaving out a space.

Another important skill, which is completely obvious, but I’d never had the occasion to try before, was that if I don’t understand how to do something or a program is not working, sometimes its just a matter of finding the right help. There is an infinite amount of help available on the internet for learning new software and technologies. There are countless tutorials for learning software at Lynda.com and on YouTube. WordPress has an excellent help system built into its platform, and Scratch has a discussion forum where I found help with scripts that weren’t working by looking at the code people with similar issues had used. The best help I found for the Wiki sites assignment, was in just looking at the actual html code other students had used. Which is usually the easiest way to fix most digital issues, and why learning html and css is so important. If you don’t know how to solve a technical problem, look at someone else’s code.

Learning how to find help and answer my own technology software questions will serve me well in my future career as a public librarian I’m sure. Why? Because librarians deal with the flow of information-accessing information and helping others to access it; and retaining information in accessible yet secure ways that safeguard it from theft and damage. In the 21^stcentury librarians need a whole new skill set to do this. The digital revolution of the past twenty years has been worldwide and exponential, especially in the past ten years with the development of smart phones. People have immediate access to infinite amounts of information, so much so that it can be overwhelming for many people. Especially for older generations who didn’t grow up with these technologies, or for people from lower income communities who don’t have has much access to training or the latest computer equipment and software. Not to mention, the cybersecurity aspects of this constant and ubiquitous flow of information are incredibly important, but most people have only a vague and hazy knowledge of what to do to keep their personal information safe. And if they are like me before taking the cybersecurity portion of this class, probably choose to ignore it because it seems too overwhelming to learn about and prefer to think cyber fraud hopefully won’t happen to them. But as I learned in the iQ4 unit, hacking, ransomware, identity theft, and other computer fraud is happening all the time, not only to individuals and businesses, but to public library systems, hospitals, and local city governments.

The iQ4 portion of the class taught me more than I realized I needed to know about cyber safety. I enjoyed the role-playing aspect and working in teams. If you work on a theoretical problem as if it actually happened, it forces you to think about it in practical ways that really help you retain the information. Furthermore, I actually changed my bank password for the first time in ten years, and when I was downloading images for the Scratch game, I was very cautious about which sites I was accessing them from. Something that wouldn’t have occurred to me before. I will be taking cyber safety best practices into my career now, as well as my personal life; and hopefully I’ll be able to pass some of those practices on to library patrons that might otherwise never learn them.

In conclusion, finishing the semester by arranging all my projects together in one portfolio in the WordPress blog has been inspiring. I feel proud, like wow I did this, I made a website, I made a videogame, I made a moving postcard, a quiz, a slide show, and it all looks good. That’s pretty amazing for someone who started the class saying I don’t get technology.

Here’s a link to the advanced game I made in Scratch

This is the first game I created in Scratch

In the Technology of Information Class we did a unit on cybersecurity. Our class worked with the iQ4 platform, which trains and recruits people for cyber security positions. My group worked on a theoretical case of intellectual property theft, and used the NIST cybersecurity framework to come up with a plan of action to identify, detect, protect, respond and recover from the cyber fraud, and to prevent future cyber attacks. Here is a google slide show of our plan that we created and presented to the class

Having become a master of google drive, I created this site to present my previously posted class projects in a google site format.

I learned how to create a Wiki page, and how to edit other people’s wikis. Here’s my page

This is a Google slide show I made summarizing one of the readings from my Technology of Information class.

Take this quiz I made in Google Forms on notable achievements in literature

The first class I’ve taken in grad school is the Technology of Information. In this class I’ve learned to code with HTML and CSS, created media projects with the online editing program Thimble, and learned to use WordPress to create blogs and webpages. I’ve also learned Excel, advanced Microsoft Word features, how to create Google sites with quizzes and slide shows, and many social media tips. All of this is invaluable practical information for a librarian in the 21st century. Furthermore, the reading assignments of the class  have presented me with new ideas about the relationship between modern technology and information gathering, spreading and retention; and how that relationship is changing the world.