When we taught Five Weeks to a Social Library, we used Drupal and kind of had to hack it to make it work as a course management system. Too bad DrupalEd wasn’t out yet. But it is now! The goal of this site is to create a flexible framework that allows for users to set …
I was beyond thrilled to see the Wired article featuring Helene Blowers’ amazing Learning 2.0 project and model. You know when you make it into something like Wired, you’ve MADE IT. 🙂 It pleases me to no end to see so many libraries replicating the program to provide accessible and fun technology education to staff …
If you have any interest in implementing social software tools at your library, you may want to check out some of the amazing proposals created by our participants for their libraries. I have organized the proposals by the technology they want to use and by library type. It’s obvious looking at proposals by tool that …
In this post, I’m going to talk about the decisions we made in creating the course and what I would do differently next time. Hopefully this will be useful to those of you who wish to replicate the course. I’m sure my fellow organizers will have other insights to add from their perspective. Certain decisions …
Last Spring, while Chairing the library track of HigherEd BlogCon and feeling like it was not an engaging enough online conference model, I had a crazy idea to create a free online conference with more synchronous and asynchronous pieces to really draw people in and build a community. I refused to believe that the only …
Wow! I can’t believe we’ve just finished Week 4. It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling. I can’t imagine waking up in a little over a week and not finding new posts from my friends in this program. I have gained so much from my interactions with them, more than I could have ever imagined. I only …
As you all know, I’m a big fan of wikis, such a big fan that I often cannot gauge how other people will respond when they are introduced to wikis. Well, imagine my surprise to discover how incredibly enthusiastic our participants were this week about implementing wikis in their library; probably more so than any …
Week two of Five Weeks to a Social Library is now over. RSS and del.icio.us really generated a lot of excitement for our participants and many could see the personal and professional benefits of using these tools. We have people spending 16 hours per week on the class because they want to play with these …
I always tease Roy Tennant about how so many geek girls (me included) — and probably geek boys too — are totally crushing on him. He doesn’t really “get it”. I think his recent post in TechEssence, “Open Letter to ILS Vendors” is a great example of how smart, pragmatic and (as John Blyberg puts …
The weeks and months before the start of Five Weeks to a Social Library required a significant amount of work, but I don’t think I was prepared for how much time I would need to devote once the course started. However, it has been totally worth it so far. I am literally blown away by …
I have always been an idea person. I probably get that from my dad who has had dozens of business ideas in the 29 years I’ve known him. However, before I became a librarian, I rarely pursued any of the ideas I had. I usually either didn’t know where to start or I didn’t think …
I’ve been meaning to write about Walt’s great Cites and Insights piece on conference speaking. If you haven’t already read it, do take a look. He combines insights from Rachel Singer Gordon, Dorothea Salo, Jessamyn West and 90 people who participated in Rachel’s survey on the subject with his own insights to create a really …
Jennifer Macaulay, who really just has to stop writing such insightful pieces or I will never get anything done, wrote a piece on her experiences as a distance learner a couple of weeks ago. And if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that I had written the entire thing myself, so much did …
In light of what I was writing about wikis and participation, I would like to ask for your help. I have been wanting to have some guidelines on the Library Success Wiki, similar to those that govern the Wikipedia. However, I never wanted to do it on my own for fear that it would be …
David King is in the middle of a terrific series on his blog about inviting participation in Web 2.0/social software tools. Here are the ones he’s come out with so far: Inviting Participation in Web 2.0 Part 2: Passive Invitations Part 3: Active Invitations Check out the comments too where people are making some great …
I remember when I got my job at Norwich, but before I started, I wondered what the new job would mean for my blog. How would my writing reflect on my organization? Would people ask me to censor myself? Fortunately, it has not changed what I write in the least. My blog is separate from …
I am pleased to announce that, after much deliberation, we have chosen our participants for the Five Weeks to a Social Library course! They are a diverse group — geographically, in the type of population they work with, and in terms of their position at their library. Here is the list: Bayer, Dell – Sr. …
I went to an arts magnet school for high school (and yes, it was a bit like Fame with people dancing and singing in the halls — not exactly the typical high school experience, thank goodness). My “talent” was creative writing. In 9th grade, Frank Cerabino, a columnist for the Palm Beach Post came to …
I just wanted to remind folks that December 1 is the deadline for applications to participate in the Five Weeks to a Social Library course. You can find the application instructions here. We have gotten an incredible number of applications for the course from people all over the world — from all different types of …
While at Internet Librarian, I learned about the Maintain IT Project. This three-year Bill and Melinda Gates funded initiative is designed to identify best practices for maintaining public access computers. Right now, they are collecting stories from library folks about working with public access computers and keeping them running. From these stories of success and …