Assessing Information Needs

I didn't have any classes this past week due to MLK day plus all of my professors being in Denver for a conference. This worked out well as I had to work late every day this week. Unfortunately, I didn't get nearly as much homework done as I would have liked, so I need to write my first paper of the semester this weekend for my Info. Needs of Children class. I really love the class, but I really do not love writing papers. That's the one thing I did not miss when I was not in school. I missed the learning and the classes and the discussions. Did not miss writing papers even one little bit.

The week before last, I attended the first meeting of my Assessing Information Needs class. It is going to be a very interesting course, and I've already learned a lot. Like I have never really had to write a *research* paper. Not a real one anyway. I guess at Hood, at least in the courses I took, they cared more about what we thought than if we could find out what other people thought. At most I would have to consult a couple of books, but I don't think I ever had to seek out journal articles or any other kind of source than books.

In my Information Needs of Children class, so far I have learned that I have awesome taste in children's books. Unfortunately for me. The lists and professional resources we are required to use to make our selections from are filled with books that I've already read, and therefore I'm not allowed to use them. Not that the professor would know, but the point of this class is to expand our knowledge and familiarity with children's books, so it's kind of cheating if I don't read books I've never read before. And it's not that I object to reading new books, it's just making it more of a pain to find ones to read.

School Media Specialist Time!

I have officially signed up for the School Media certification at school. Now I just need to purchase a subscription to the e-portfolio software they use to keep track of/evaluate our work for it. And figure out how/where to get fingerprinting and background check (plus the proof of these things) for my application to the graduate teacher education program. I've got time - those things aren't absolutely necessary until before my last semester's internship, but still. I don't know how long it takes to do these things.

The start of my second semester!

I had my first class of the semester last night, and I think it's going to be a great class. It was Information Needs of Children, and we basically went over how the class is going to be run, the types of assignments we'll be responsible for, expectations, and then we had a half hour of small group discussions during which we discussed what a child is, what it's like to be a child and what is children's literature.

There is going to be a TON of reading in this class, but the bulk of that reading will be kids books, and I think that will be fun. There are a handful of books we'll read together as a class, but the rest of the books we'll get to pick ourselves based on certain criteria (we have to learn about it using "professional resources," certain weeks are certain genres, etc.).

I'm even kind of excited about some of the papers we're going to have to write. And our big project is an annotated bibliography on a topic of our choice, so I can make a bibliography on kids books about fairy tales or dragons or anything else I want!

The professor seems very organized, and very excited about the subject matter. I can't wait to see how this class turns out.