Via Steve Garwood:
Before I start, let me tell you that I teach graduate and undergraduate students in Library and Information Science and Information Technology and Informatics respectively. The classes I teach are: Information Technologies for Libraries and Information Agencies, Web Design, Multimedia Production, Social Software Literacy and I’ll ocassionally guest lecture in Research and Reference classes. I teach these classes on-campus, online, and in some cases a little bit of both.
In my position, I generally need to keep up with the library world and technology in the library world. I also need to be at the intermediate level with computers and networking (Mac and PC, esp. so I can troubleshoot), MS Office (2000, 2003, 2007), standards based xhtml and css, Adobe/Macromedia CS3/Studio8 (DreamWeaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Flash), social software applications (wikis, blogs, rss, podcasting, vodcasting, IM, etc.), and I need to be able to use/utilize educational technology, which for me mostly means screencasting – Camtasia, Jing, Captivate, etc. (I’ll knock out, on average 5-10, of these a week).
I usually start my day checking in on my online classes, especially the Virtual Office and online Discussions…these areas are like the ocean…don’t want to turn your back too long…I can usually get in/out of that in about 1/2 hour or so, but sometimes I get sucked in and 2 hours later I’m still in there answering questions, participating, causing trouble, etc.
From there it depends on the day…am I teaching on-campus that day? then I’m prepping that day…I may have printed out materials beforehand, but I like to get my brain good and active with the material on a “teaching day” so I’m gonna spend an hour or so with material I’m familiar with just to make sure that I don’t miss anything during a “lecture”…if it’s a “lesson plan” that I just came up with…well, then I might be spending all day, if not the day before working through details and making sure my plan will actually work.
Thanks for the post Steve! I’d love to hear from more LIS educators and LIS students.