Front Desk Fiction Non-Fiction Reference Professional Collection Audio / Visual Checkout Desk

Welcome to my ePortfolio!

My name is Aaron Mueller and this is the final product of my Masters in Educational Technology with UBC. This website is an exploration in my learning throughout this Masters program, focusing on what I believe is the essential skills of the 21st century. I hope that by exploring this tool, my reflections, recommendations, learning and productions, both students and educators can gain insight and resources that will enable their own Information Literacy. Please watch this virtual tour and introduction to help get you started.

The easiest way for myself to understand this profound shift in literacy was to frame my learning around Libraries. Libraries have been an essential part of my life, from some very early beginnings in elementary school, right up into this nearly finished Masters program. In my current professional role, I work for the Vancouver Board of Education, at a Distance Learning school called the Vancouver Learning Network. At this school, I teach the senior english courses (Literature 12, Writing 12, English 12) and also work part-time as a "Cybrarian", or Digital Librarian. This Cybrarian role is aimed to help my distance education students become more information literate, acquiring the many skills outlined in the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Performance Indicators for Students:

“Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources.  Students:

      1. plan strategies to guide inquiry.
      2. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.
      3. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.
      4. process data and report results” (NETS, 2007).

This group has also been very helpful in providing insightful goals, strategies and tools to help educators identify the key areas they can develop in their own practice and pedagogy, enabling themselves, and their students in the new 21st Century skills. (NETS for Educators 2008)

This ePortfolio I have built, focuses on the issues of Information Literacy and the development of the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding that entails being “information literate”.  This has been a common theme and topic throughout my classes, assignments and discussions within the MET program and faculty.  The development of our information-rich world, saturated with media (Wesch, 2007), populated with varying levels of information literacy experience and knowledge and focused on new literacies and modes of learning (Bates, 2003; Bruce, 2002) has highlighted the need to educate and inform my colleagues, communities, and students in how to find, select, evaluate and reference information (Yu-Mei, 2007; NETS, 2007). 

As you explore this site, please ponder the changes from our traditional model of a Library, to the new digital model, where your neighbourhood library is always open, available, convenient, helpful, rich and robust. You are currently at the "Front Desk", or welcome page for this site, and as you work your way through the familiar sections of a traditional Library, I hope you will learn about developments and changes to these ideas. Each section will highlight my reflections on certain courses in my masters, as well as showcase some of the artifacts I've created in these different courses. All the artifacts I will be showcasing explore and discuss different aspects of Digital Libraries and Information Literacies. Finally, each familiar section of the traditional library will include a discussion of a possible new model for digital libraries, where the fiction can become non-fiction and the reference section is the most visited!

I hope you enjoy your stay, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Aaron Mueller

aaron@aaronmueller.com


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Aaron Mueller - 2010 Masters of Educational Technology @ UBC