Capstone Project!

Hello everyone!  Today I am going to give you an update of what I am working on my capstone project for my schooling at Wayne State.  I developed a Dream Team of Allegan County (the county that I live in here in Michigan) to talk about how the Allegan County libraries could collaborate with other Allegan County organizations.  This had never been done before, and great organizations were represented at this meeting including Disability Network, Area Agency on Aging, Legal Aide, VA, other governmental agencies, and of course United Way, who had given me a small grant that covered the food and location of the meeting.  The meeting brought together different organizations that are usually not in the same room together and was a complete success.  We talked about having the various organizations to speak at the local libraries. 

One of the ideas is that seniors and others generally do not want to drive far for a talk or meeting.  They will go to the local store, post office, and they will go to their local library.  The idea is to have speakers go to the local libraries to reach out to this population.  Each organization offered to give talks during the daytime so that people who have night blindness don’t have to drive in the dark.  The speaker could be people from the organization or partner with the local schools to have students give the talks as well.

This fall we are going to have another meeting at the Allegan County Library Association, this time with the various organizations each giving a little speech about what they do, and what they would like to talk about.  All of this is a good foundation for my capstone project, which will use this information for completing a technology programming needs assessment for the library that I work at.  I will take the various ideas that we discuss and interview each organization as part of data collection for the needs assessment.  I will be conducting the research while teaching technology classes at my library, to see what works and what does not work. 

Many of these research ideas come from my professors, Dr. Laurie Bonnici and Dr. Stephanie Maatta.  Dr. Laurie Bonnici already works with laptop computer lessons for seniors in her area, where she even found a grant to do so.  Maybe with her help someday I can do the same thing: teach seniors how to use technology.  More information by Dr. Bonnici’s “Project FIT 4 Retirement” can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBlgcqyMUNk .