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Free Stuff
Webinar: Learning for Learning Profesionals: Competencies, Strategies and Resources"
Dec 1st
CLENE and Webjunction are co-sponsoring a great Webinar on Thursday, December 11, 11 a.m. PST, (1;00 CST, 2 p.m. EST): Learning for Learning Professionals: Competencies, Strategies and Resources.
REGISTRATION: http://evanced.info/webjunction/evanced/eventsignup.asp?ID=1546
PRESENTERS: Mary Ross, CLENERT Board member and former manager of staff development at the Seattle Public Library, will lead the discussion. She will be joined by Betha Gutsche, curriculum designer for e-learning initiatives at WebJunction, and Jennifer Homer, vice president of external relations for the American Society of Training and Development.
DESCRIPTION:
As trainers, continuing education coordinators and staff development managers, we believe in lifelong learning. We are committed to helping library employees improve their skills and build successful careers. As cheerleaders for organizational and individual learning, do we sometimes lose sight of our own learning? What are we doing to invest in ourselves? What are the competencies that we will need as we lead our libraries in future skill development and employee learning?
To celebrate Employee Learning Week, join us for an exploration of current and future competencies for learning professionals working in libraries. We will look at strategies for our own development and the resources available to help us pursue them.
ASTD’s Employee Learning Week, December 8-12, features champions, who successfully connect staff learning with achieving results. For more information, go to: http://www.employeelearningweek.org/.
Mary Ross, CLENERT Board member and former manager of staff development at the Seattle Public Library, will lead the discussion. She will be joined by Betha Gutsche, curriculum designer for e-learning initiatives at WebJunction, and Jennifer Homer, vice president of external relations for the American Society of Training and Development.
This hour-long webinar is co-sponsored by WebJunction and ALA’s Continuing Library Education Network and Round Table (CLENERT).
Register here: http://evanced.info/webjunction/evanced/eventsignup.asp?ID=1546
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Loading ...Online training: not as easy as it looks
Sep 4th
(Here I go again—blogging about another WebJunction event. Can I help it if there’s some cool stuff shakin’ at WJ?)
If you’ve presented, facilitated, or produced a live, online training session or webinar, you have a sense of how many variables are involved. It’s a juggling act with virtual balls. The really successful trainers make it look easy and seamless.
WebJunction has partnered with InSync Training to offer the Synchronous Learning Expert certificate series to help you master seamless and smooth online facilitation, as well as design of online training and the opportunity to create your own capstone e-design project. The great advantage of taking this course through WebJunction is being in a cohort with other library staff with similar interests AND having the new WJ collaborative learning space to maximize your online learning experience.
As a prerequisite to the SLE courses, WJ is offering a FREE one hour introductory course, Learn How to Learn Online. There are two offerings of this course currently scheduled:
- Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 10:00 AM Pacific/1:00 PM Eastern
- Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 2:00 PM Pacific/5:00 PM Eastern
To enroll in either offering, visit http://tinyurl.com/5896z8.
Questions? Email courses@webjunction.org
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...You think professional development is tough?
Jul 16th
My ALA experience was so packed with meetings this year that I only got to one session— Professional Development Around the World. This one was a high priority for me, combining my deep interest in how libraries operate around the world and my interest in lifelong learning for library staff.
Through the admirable efforts of organizations like Read Global, Lubuto, and others, developing countries are tasting the fruits of what a library can do for their communities. But providing the buildings and the materials is only the first step toward assuring enduring, quality service.
I would ask any library worker who frets about continuing education in our system to stop and think about the enormity of having to start from absolute scratch. The Read Global program in Nepal offers 21-day seminars for library staff that begin with a module on “what is a library?” before moving on to the more technical subjects of cataloging, book repair, or reference. The program also includes training for the villagers on how to use a library and for community leaders on how to steward the library. Oh, the things we take for granted.
A group of this year’s Emerging Leaders undertook to provide access to free, online professional development opportunities through its IRRT Free Links project. Using a wiki in combination with del.icio.us feeds, the group aggregated an impressive array of links to free online technology resources that “will help international librarians stay current with library information and trends in the United States and elsewhere.” Since most of the resources are in English, this list is just as useful for training needs here in North America. I only wonder if the group will ever open up the wiki permissions to allow others to add resources.
Another perspective from the opposite side of the globe resonated more with the training challenges we face here. Dr. Gillian Hallam, from very developed, even cutting-edge Australia, posed the provocative question, “Professional development: whose responsibility is it?” The answer is that responsibility is shared: managers, trainers, and professional associations all play a role, but it is the individual who has the “obligation to yourself to keep up-to-date, develop new skills, knowledge and confidence to ensure you have a successful and rewarding career.” The Australian Library and Information Association has implemented a 3-year professional development scheme with an accompanying career development kit to facilitate learning. So far, the voluntary participation is running at about 8%. Makes me wonder what the motivation/participation ratio would look like between library staff in developing versus developed countries.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Free ebook: Tips and Tricks
Dec 20th
Free always gets my attention. The eLearning guild is offering this holiday gift in the form of a downloadable pdf of 162 Tips and Tricks for
Working with e-Learning Tools. (Thanks to The Pursuing Performance Blog for the link.*)
The book is packed with ideas and best practices on a variety of tools—course-authoring, rapid e-learning, media, and simulation tools. All geared toward helping you avoid the pitfalls of exploring new territory.
Example: tip for course development
“When recording any audio narration, don’t record things that frequently change. For example, if you record this script: ‘The price for Product X is $19.99,’ a price change will force you to rerecord your audio. Instead, ensure you show the price onscreen, but record your script this way: ‘Here you can see the current price for Product X.’”
Example: tip for tool selection
“Do not look for an all-in-one tool solution. Use tools for their strengths, and combine outputs.”
These are just two out of 162. And the price is so right.
*btw, I found this link through my PLE. I’m discovering the difference between my feedreader and the PLE. In the feedreader, I follow a deliberate selection of blogs, intentionally limited by my capacity to absorb the influx–about 15 learning-specific blogs out of a total of 50+ feeds. By contrast, the PLE taps the vaster network of blogs, bookmarking sites, video sites, etc, on a specific topic, thus surfacing a more serendipitous array of links in small bites. The tools work nicely in tandem.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Learning Incentives (?)
Dec 13th
Michael Stephens at Tame the Web draws our attention to Skokie Public Library’s “Ten Things” learning program. If parking is as bad in Skokie as it is in New Jersey, this is one heck of a learning incentive!!
So what learning incentives (food, swag, gold stars) have you found effective in your training adventures?
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