Bob and I taught an afternoon session yesterday at the Surburban Library System headquarters for Jenny Levine. We had ten library folks from all different kinds of libraries in to talk about technology training. It was a blast! Bob and I play off each other well and I look forward to teaching with him again! Jenny moblogged it here and here. Aaron worked the virtual Reference Desk and participated! Our PPT is here!
Categories Emerging Technology
353 posts
In honor of our program today at SLS, I’ve been pondering some trainer’s tips… Be prepared! Prepare the training materials, such as updating notes, URLs and facts and remember how quickly things change in the technology world. Prepare the training space: set up computers, test equipment and test software. Get to know the room if it’s the first time you’ve been there. Know your audience. Who are they? Plan for specific groups: Students, Faculty, Seniors, Novices or Teens. A class for seniors will be different than a class for your teen users. Check out all the stuff you can find […]
Reuters Tech Story on Digital Cameras And this! Take a look folks! “Digital camera shipments are seen rising to 68.6 million units this year from 47.9 million in 2003, research firm IDC said on Thursday in its Worldwide Digital Still Camera Forecast. Shipments rose 71 percent in 2003 from 2002.” Nice. This little article offers a lot of stuff for those Digital Camera classes!
Using a PowerBook (YES!), Dr. Rosenbaum took us through a review of a similar talk he gave 6 years ago and then looked to the future. “Trendspotting: Libraries & Technology (or what do I have to learn now?) Librarians getting together — “Community of Practice” – Shared work practices Six years ago: The web is becoming a community Digital Neighborhoods and virtual communities Chat Rooms Portals Current Technical Trends: *Wireless Libraries – Bluetooth/ 802.11g *PDAs, Tablets, Cell Phones – Cheaper, more common, wireless and net access. Libraries need to think about a new range of services that serve these devices. […]
(*without breaking the bank) (Thoughts this am, connected to Panera’s WiFi network, an iced tea, and the whole weekend stretched out before me..) Blog! The tools are free. Blog internally and externally. Promote your stuff to your users. Promote the library to the staff. Bring out your staff’s hidden creativity. It’s time well spent. Send out your Web content via RSS. Not everyone may know what’s up with RSS but they soon will. That little on your site says a lot! Use IM to answer patron’s questions. The software is free! Publicize your library’s screen name and see what happens. […]
Via Librarian.net and RFID in Libraries: SFPL RFID! WOW! Library officials will seek about $300,000 in the city’s 2004-05 budget to begin the program, which could take at least six years to fully implement and ultimately cost millions of dollars. I’ll be watching this. Please please…will a librarian at SFPL start a blog and chronicle the project???
Nice post at Liz’s mamamusings:: http://mamamusings.net/archives/2004/05/03/teaching_new_technologies.php I enjoy Liz’s stuff a lot. This one I particularly liked. As a fella who someday would like to teach, this bit was interesting: The future, I think, is to let go of the traditional approach of teaching how to do things in a specific language, and instead offer a more studio-like environment in which students are given access to resources and tools, and then work on developing a project. (We teach most of our classes in ?studio mode,? but in most cases they?re far from real studio approaches?they?re lectures with occasional hands-on exercises.) […]
Check out this Wired piece about shuffling: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63068,00.html?tw=rss.TOP As I sit here this chilly Saturday am at Panera Bread, writing the tech planning article and blogging, I’m shuffling and it’s wonderful… I’d forgotten about “Love is a Stranger” by the Eurythmics and Blondie’s “Shayla.”
Library consultant Richard Dougherty detailed the 5 requirements of offering digital reference in the May 2002 issue of American Libraries. They include: ? Staffing ? Acquiring the Technology ? Training staff ? Promotion ? Creating policy These five gems could be applied to any technology planning in a library setting. You can’t do one part and not do the other or you are setting your service up to fail. An untrained staff? No promotion? Forget about it!
My new PB 17″ is on its way! It left Shanghai this morning….