Tame The Web

Via Library trainer Lori Reed:

http://librarytrainer.com/2008/04/26/learning-from-corporate-america-starbucks-closes-nationwide-for-training/

From the Starbucks Web site, “That amounts to almost a half a million hours of training in one night.”

My first thought on hearing this announcement was publicity stunt. Why do you need to close for training? Why can’t you do it before or after closing or off site? I learned though that this was more than training in how to make a cup of coffee. According to the Starbucks Web site this was “a nationwide education event, designed to energize [employees] and transform the customer experience.”

There’s something to be said about putting our money where our mouth is. Do you close for one day a year for “in-service” or “staff institute?” Are you following the same tired models for this day that you have for years: speaker, breakouts, lunch, awards, then everyone flees until next time. As Lori points out, how might libraries adopt this model for encouraging and energizing?

There’s always some great content at the School Library Journal Web site. This video by Jeffrey Hastings, exploring the ASUS Eee PC 701 4G sub-notebook, is an extension of his published review. It expands visually on the review in a fun and informative manner. The possibilities for using video in this manner excite me: school and other librarians get even more information for decision making than just the printed review, the link can be shared (and blogged) easily, and the video format (music, shots, script) is a perfect prototype for doing your own reviews. 

Greetings! I’m embedded at the Panera Bread at the corner of State Street and Congress Parkway in downtown Chicago, waiting for my first class of the semester to begin. LIS701: Introduction to Library and Information Science will be Wednesday nights inside the Harold Washington Library Center of the Chicago Public Library. I am really looking forward to starting with a new group of MLIS students.

While embedded, I’m updating my course Web sites with some wonderful recent links. I thought I’d share them here as well for any TTW readers who might be designing their own courses, enhancing a Learning 2.0 course, or reading up on some of the topics we visit here. These, to me, are some hot links:

Quick Guide to Second Life for Librarians: http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/a-quick-guide-to-second-life-for-librarians/

Hey, Isn’t That… : (fascinating little article about photos used without folks’ permission..) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/08/AR2008010804626_pf.html

Sarah Houghton-Jan’s Top Tech Trends: http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/2008/01/sarah-houghton.html

What’s Playing at the Library: (Gaming at the library) http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20080111_Whats_playing_at_the_library_.html

Infinite Touch Points: (Great post about touch points in Web 2.0 and beyond) http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2008/01/infinite-touch.html 

Rock on Steve! Thanks for another great post in the “Learn More” series.

 http://librarystream.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/learn-more-twitter/ 

Don’t miss Steve Campion’s newest installments of his “Learn More” series. The various modules he’s put up for all to use would fit nicely in your online learning endeavor or for a library staff meeting. I appreciate Steve’s straight forward approach.

Good work!

Social networks 1: http://librarystream.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/learn-more-social-networks-pt-1/

Social networks 2: http://librarystream.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/learn-more-social-networkis-pt-2/

Sarah’s LTR wooohoo

Originally uploaded by mstephens7

More Info

Sarah’s LTR is Here!

Originally uploaded by Librarian In Black.

A must for every training librarian, staff development librarian, or adminstrator who wants to get the training and competency ball rolling!

http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/technology-competencies-and-training-for-libraries.html

Allen County PL is incredible!

Checkout the phone training video! What a long way we’ve come from the days of pulling everyone into a library training room for step-by-step instructions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EramdKlwzS4

Tamara writes, referencing a slide in our Technology Training PPT from ILI2006: Can you explain the concept of a “Gadget Garage”? I’m not sure what that is!

On a tour of Princeton Public Library when our Roadshow was on the East Coast this summer, Janie Hermann showed us a cabinet in their technology training room filled with gadgets and devices. “This is the gadget garage,” she said. I saw an ipod, digital camera, video camera, etc. In training sessions for staff and public, the training librarians would pull out the gadgets and let people play and experiment. This is a perfect example of this shifted method of training.

But Michael, you may be saying, what if our library can’t afford a bunch of gadgets. Try offering library users a “technology petting zoo” and ask them to bring their gadgets to play with. Or ask staff as well for training sessions. I also suggested to the group in Columbus for the Management and Administration conference to “beg, borrow or steal” to get some tech in the library. Donations? Grants? Cheapie eBay puchases?

Are other folks using this type of hands on exploration?

http://librarytrax.wordpress.com/2006/10/17/tecktrack-classes-for-sc-public-library-staff/

Nice work South Carolina Library Folk! I see the p[otential for experience, play and exploration in these course listings!

Via NEKLS:

Brenda has eight tips for would-be technology trainers:
1. Stop trying to provide step-by-step directions
2. Encourage independence.
3. Expect success.
4. Encourage exploration.
5. Provide context.
6. Treat training as a collaborative project.
7. Use storytelling.
8. Be real-world.

http://ericschnell.blogspot.com/2006/04/library-staff-and-technology-buy-in.html

My earlier posts point out the observation that companies that have successfully adopted disruptive technologies did so only when they created a separate organization to deal with the technology. The idea of a group within the library being organized and responsible for investigating emerging and disruptive technology issues fits into the pattern of companies that successfully managed their innovation.

Think technology group play.

Great post from Eric Schnell. He really proposes some great ideas and outlines steps for an emerging technlogy play group! I would recommend this to libraries that feel they have fallen behind from being on the cutting edge or need to ramp up their innovation with technology. My favorite part? Send the Devil’s Advocate packing for play time:

Not only should devil’s advocacy not be a played during the group’s play time, they actually need to operate independently and outside a library’s standard processes and procedures!

Phil Bradley writes about using Squidoo to create teaching aids. It’s a “How to..” do anything social site with some cool features and a definite Web 2.0 feel.

http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2006/03/squidoo_as_a_te.html

Here’s his “lens” for web design: http://www.squidoo.com/webdesigning/

Here’s the lens for an “Intro to Web 2.0:” http://www.squidoo.com/introtoweb20/

UPDATE: More lenses from Phil: http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2006/04/my_squidoo_lens.html

UPDATE: What a great time that was! Thanks to all at OPAL!!

Here’s the presentation.

Here are some extra links as resources:

Cluetrain

Netvibes

Open Source Software at TechEssence

ALA on DRM & DRM Guide for Librarians

Librarians Who IM

Future of Music

Using Bloglines!

The Internet is Entering its LEGO era

Libraries with MySpace accounts

Tennant and Pace on the Future of Catalogues from Panlibus

Rainie on Millennials from SELCO

iPods in Action at Georgia College and State University

Using Evidence to Support our Libraries from Stephen Abram

OCLC Perceptions

Great post at Librarians with Class that links to this article.

Reading this article is a bit hard for someone who has devoted a great deal of time and energy to the preparation of training materials and the delivery of training classes. I don’t think that I’m ready to just give up on training. I think there are ways, however, that we could incorporate more of the communities of practice elements into training sessions.

I have found some of the best moments of learning and “AHA!” is one the folks in workshops I lead discuss the topics amongst themselves and then bring thoughts back to the group. Same goes for my time spent in the classroom.

Tonight, I’m subbing for my colleague Joe Sipocz in his Info literacy class at IUSB. Here’s the outline, courtesy of Nancy at IUSB. (And I added a few things as well…) I’m putting it here for easy access

1. What is the Internet?

A. Definitions
B. How does it work?
C. History
D.What is on the Internet? | Lycos Top 50 (via Stephen Abram) | Deep Web

B. Evaluation

Evaluation checklist: http://www.iusb.edu/~libg/pdf/internet-basics.pdf

Other criteria, the 3C’s: context, comparison and corroboration.

Examples:

http://www.whitehouse.org
http://www.whitehouse.gov

In-class exercise:

http://www.martinlutherking.org
http://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html
http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html#gfpbunnyanchor

III. Search engines/Directories

How they work: Spiders | Google Pigeons

Which ones are best? http://infopeople.org/search/chart.html | Phil Bradley’s Picks

Clustering: http://www.vivisimo.com |http://www.kartoo.com

Rock on Stephanie Zimmerman… her images came into my aggregator today. Hot stuff, especially this:

What a great way to promote training in a library!

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/161/report_display.asp

I meant to blog this a few weeks ago, but here it is…still timely in my book.

“The average American internet user is not sure what podcasting is, what an RSS feed does, or what the term “phishing” means…”

Pew lists eight techie terms in the report and I kid you not, your public/student/employee technology/internet classes should define and discuss everyone of them!

These did ok:

Spam
Firewall
Spyware
Internet Cookies
Adware

These didn’t:

Phishing
Podcasting
RSS Feeds

(I’d add blogging and image sites too!)

This is important knowledge… every librarian on your staff should be able to define these terms as well as your users. Sorry to preach, but I’m just saying: let’s dive into to our role as info literacy trainers and beef up those classes!

For folks that say “RSS isn’t catching on..” Guess what? It is, really…slowly but it is. What we can do is help push it along by adding Bloglines or the like to our classes.

For those HOT HOT HOT librarians out there actively training this stuff and staying on top - well done! Comment here if you have any good tips…

Chad, making the move to his first big library job, posts this:

http://www.hiddenpeanuts.com/archives/2005/08/09/peer-instruction/

I’ve had a slight change in my job description. Together with another new hire, I’ll be in charge of most of UAH’s student instruction efforts. So glad I took a course on it last semester! I admit to being a bit nervous: In some cases, I’ll only be a year and a bit older than the students I’m teaching. Has anyone else been in this situation? Any problems or success stories? I’d love to hear them.

Chad - I must say this is a great position to be in and if I was working at your library I’d be tickled to have a fresh out of school, and yes, younger, librarian doing the instruction.Why, you ask?

I know you will bring a slant to the program that will include newer technologies, newer ideas and a Millennial outlook. Bring yourself, your interests and your persepctive to the classes you design, teach or collaborate on. I think there’s something to be said about reaching students in the library setting and who better but someone who probably gets them (because he is one).

You’ll understand how students interact, their collaborative nature and the way they look for information. Now, here’s the hard part: you may find resistance amongst people on the staff that “have always taught such and such this way” and are not ready for new innovation and methods of communication and collaboration.

Be cool. You can also learn alot from the seasoned staff and hopefully they will learn a lot from you. Those folks, open to change and the future, really rock my world. And take every opportunity you can to show them how our proffession has changed, how our new users are growing up and where the library might fit in the whole picture.

Good luck! An keep us posted with your blog!

Training should be viewed as a necessity, not a luxury; as mandatory, not voluntary; and as comprehensive, not superficial. Training should be both theoretical and practical. The consequence of poor training will be that our users will lose confidence in librarians: They will think that librarians have joined the ranks of others that have fallen under the weight of emerging technologies, and they will see libraries as another institution that is threatened with extinction as the 21st century approaches.

Krissoff, A. & Konrad, L. COMPUTER TRAINING FOR STAFF AND PATRONS, Computers in Libraries, Jan1998, Vol. 18, Issue 1

Skagirlie ponders:

http://www.skagirlie.net/wpblog/index.php?p=205

And I wonder, as she does, if this is a global thing. We had a wave a few years ago of embracing the Web as a one way information tool (for the most part) and now social software, such as blogs, IM, flickr, etc, (as well as Gaming which can really heat things up) has created a whole new divide between the Millennial librarians who ache to implement and use these hot tools and the Boomer Libs who proceed with caution and possibly trepidation.

Thoughts?

My library train ing colleague Rob Coers has been “on the road.” This, my friends, is a sweet training gig! He’s covered weblogs, RSS, databases and more!

This my friends is a sweet training gig! He’s covered weblogs, RSS, databases and more!

Here’s what Babelfish had to say about the picture above: “Lianne Leonaora thank me on behalf of the group for my commitment, patience and the terribly instructive days. And that did them in very nice, kind bewoordingen. And that once more I got underline gifts still two of them. As jazzliefhebber and gitarist I will enjoy fixed the CD Evolushon of Randal Corsen, winner of the Edison jazz Award 2004th and my throat what rests to give a small pocket with medicinal kruiden from the kruidentuin of Dinah Veeris. Very nicely considered!”

I get the gist!

http://www.robcoers.nl/blog/ (in Dutch!)

LiB has posted her Tech Training Competencies! And I am a happy guy!

http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/2005/05/technology_core.html

I did a similar thing a few years ago for SJCPL but this stuff is incredible, current and useful. Read it! Do you have these skills? (SKILLZ) Does your staff?

http://www.cla-net.org/included/docs/tech_core_competencies.pdf

This set of competencies is intended to serve as a base model for technology
competencies among California library workers. California’s libraries are
incredibly diverse; there are many different types and sizes of libraries,
different staffing, and different technology. The purpose of these
competencies is not to be the guidepost by which all libraries measure
technology skills, but rather to serve as a starting point for libraries to use in
assessing their staff’s technology proficiencies, and to assist libraries in
building their own sets of tailored competencies to fit with their unique staff
and library.

Aaron’s | Jessamyn |Rose Read

Classes I Wish I Could Teach At My Library (But Can?t):

Music for the Masses: This workshop will teach partipants how to mount their entire music collections for sharing on the Peer to Peer networks. Best practices, innovative tips and legal advice if you’re busted round out a dynamic two hours in the library training room. Requirements: 1 Terrabyte firewire Hard Drive and a $200 legal retainer fee.

Camcorder Cinema 101: Join us for a field trip to a showing of Return of the Sith! We’ll provide a sheet of handy tips on making the best recording, the bus, popcorn, beverages and a ticket. Requirements: blank tapes, the coat with the big hidden pocket, a $200 legal retainer fee.

Hooked Up on the Web: The ins and out of the dating sites and those Web sites that specialize in “Ordering In.” We’ll cover the lingo, precautions and how not to get burned. Requirements: Face pic before private chat.

No one is born knowing everything

I don’t know much about other areas of librarianship.. but someone else does.

Read his post here and don’t miss the last paragraph! This is perfect LIS blogging, friends!