April News from ALA Learning

This month’s theme at ALA Learning is e-learning in libraries. What tools are you using and how are you using them? We want to hear your best practices (or biggest blunders) in self-paced learning, webinars, screencasts, social media for learning, etc. We want to hear from you! If you’d like to be a guest contributor this month please send your post along with a bio and photo to webmaster@alalearning.org.

Many thanks to our guest contributors last month on the topic of e-readers: Jasmine Posey and Angela Nolet. Be sure to check out the e-reader training materials posted on the ALA Learning Wiki under the topic Downloadable Media–special thanks to Mary K. Pelton, Jay Turner, and Chris Baker for their contributions to the wiki.

Do you have training materials to share? Please post them to the wiki. It’s easy, free, and a great resource for the community of learners we have here at the Learning Round Table.

Lastly congratulations to our contributing authors Buffy Hamilton and Bobbi Newman and Learning Round Table board member Angela Nolet on being selected as 2011 Library Journal Mover and Shakers. Your dedication and contributions to the library learning community exemplify the best in the profession.

Lori Reed

Lori Reed, Managing Editor of ALA Learning, has more than 15 years experience in training and is the Learning & Development Coordinator for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library where she oversees the learning & development of a diverse group of staff at twenty libraries. Lori’s passions are performance consulting, learning strategies, and e-learning. Lori is coauthor, with Paul Signorelli, of Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers. Lori also blogs at LoriReed.com and can be reached at lori[at]lorireed.com.

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And We’re Back!

ALALearning.org is back up and running. Thanks so much to the IT staff at ALA for their quick support–especially Jenny and Rob!

You should notice that the site loads much more quickly now. A team of round table members are working on redesigning the content and look on the site so you may notice changes in appearance over the next few weeks but our blog and RSS feeds should continue to work during this time.

Thank you so much for your patience during this time of transition and growth for the Learning Round Table!

Lori Reed
Managing Editor, ALA Learning

We’re Under Construction

In order to keep up with the heavy traffic from all our readers, ALA Learning is moving to a new host and server. It may take a few days for all our links to function again. Thank you for your patience. We will give you an update when things are back to normal again.

Lori Reed
Managing Editor, ALA Learning

Learning 2010: The Continuing Power of Collaboration

Looking back at what we learned this year produces some interesting conclusions—not the least of which is that it wasn’t so much a year of trying to create something entirely new, but, rather, a time to step back long enough to survey what surrounded us and learn more effectively how to use the collaborative resources we’ve been given: wikis. Shared document tools including Google Docs and Dropbox that are helping us incorporate cloud computing into our training-teaching-learning efforts. Web-conferencing tools ranging from WebEx, Dimdim, and TalkShoe to Google Talk and Skype for the delivery of just-in-time learning. And LinkedIn discussion groups and Twitter as a way of seeking and exchanging information that contributed to more effective learning for everyone involved rather than as a way to simply tell others where we were sitting and drinking coffee or waiting for a bus to arrive.

What remains at the heart of this learning process is the power of collaboration face to face as well as online, and what made 2010 so fruitful for so many of us was the way we managed to work together in a variety of often overlapping settings to the benefit of learners and our learning colleagues. If you haven’t yet hopped on the train, let’s take a ride together to see how these tools and how collaboration have been serving us and may well end up serving us even more effectively in the months and years to come.

The ALA Learning Round Table provides a natural starting point. In addition to providing an ongoing collaborative forum for face-to-face exchanges at American Library Association conferences to promote and support effective learning opportunities for members and prospective members, it has been developing a wiki where trainers can post as well as seek resources developed by their colleagues. The Round Table’s monthly online meetings further advance its mission of helping trainer-teacher-learners collaborate to produce resources and results that we would otherwise not enjoy. And ALA Learning—the blog where this piece is being posted—not only provides us impetus to collaborate through sharing articles but also contributes to the larger goal of drawing together trainers who are working within or working side by side with libraries rather than leaving all those one-person training offices and libraries without formal training programs in a frustrated state of isolation.

Another productive community of learners where collaboration is the order of the day is Maurice Coleman’s biweekly online T is for Training discussions. Interested regulars—the “usual suspects”—and guests frequently interact during these online hour-long free-ranging conversations via Talkshoe on a variety of topics of interest and importance to those involved in workplace learning and performance, and those discussions helped open doors this year to routes of exploration such as the possibility of helping promote the development of libraries as social learning centers. They also led to additional collaborations including the webinar Maurice and I designed and delivered in October 2010 to more than 400 participants for WebJunction—another great collaborative forum for trainer-teacher-learners in libraries. All of these tools and resources are easy to access and/or use, and they are well worth considering for workplace learning and performance programs.

The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) remains yet another gathering place at the local, regional, and national levels face to face as well as online for many of us. Opportunities for productive collaborations abound at many levels: through membership on Chapter boards and collaboration at national conferences, through learning opportunities provided via webinars, through postings on LinkedIn discussion groups, and through groups including the National Advisors for Chapters which meet face to face and use a variety of online tools and posted online documents to do business throughout the year.

My own familiarity and comfort with collaboration via wikis took a quantum leap this fall when I was accepted onto the New Media Consortium’s 2011 Horizon Report Advisory Board; all 40 of us from countries all over the world did all our work asynchronously, online, via the wiki which leads to completion of the report; among the pleasant surprises, given the small number of people involved in this worldwide project, was the discovery that ALA Learning colleague Lauren Pressley was part of the group.

If anyone remains unsold on the powerful benefits provided by collaboration and the use of the social networking tools we’ve been exploring, Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner’s new release, The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media, may prove to be the tipping point. As James Surowiecki notes in The Wisdom of Crowds, those who engage in collaborations are often the most prolific and successful at what they do (pp. 162-163). And that, of course, remains a lesson well worth absorbing anytime—not solely in the year just ending.
N.B.: Those interested in exploring the theme of collaboration through a variety of tools and other resources will find plenty of options in “Community and Collaboration in an Onsite-Online World: An Annotated Bibliography.”

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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ALA Learning Authors Nominated for Nine Edublog Awards

The ALA Learning authors have been nominated for a total of nine Edublog awards!

Best Group Blog

  • Learning Round Table
  • Bobbi Newman, Libraries and Transliteracy

Most Influential Blog Post of 2010

Best Individual Tweeter

  • Buffy Hamilton, @buffyjhamilton

Best New Blog

  • Bobbi Newman, Libraries and Transliteracy Blog

Best Resource Sharing Blog

  • Sarah Houghton-Jan, Librarian in Black

Best Librarian Blog

  • Buffy Hamilton, The Unquiet Library
  • Bobbi Newman, Librarian by Day

Best Educational Podcast

  • Maurice Coleman, T is for Training

Please support our authors and vote. Voting ends at 12 pm EST Tuesday, December 14, 2010. Only one vote allowed per IP address.

To read the full list of Edublog nominations, visit: http://edublogawards.com/

The Edublog Awards is a community based incentive started in 2005 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes. The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media.

Lori Reed

Lori Reed, Managing Editor of ALA Learning, has more than 15 years experience in training and is the Learning & Development Coordinator for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library where she oversees the learning & development of a diverse group of staff at twenty libraries. Lori’s passions are performance consulting, learning strategies, and e-learning. Lori is coauthor, with Paul Signorelli, of Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers. Lori also blogs at LoriReed.com and can be reached at lori[at]lorireed.com.

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New Features of ALA Learning

Beginning this month you’ll notice some small changes to the ALA Learning Blog and other communication tools. To engage our members in more conversations we are introducing monthly themes. You will see posts on the blog, content on the wiki, emails on the discussion forum, posts in ALA Connect, Facebook, Twitter, etc. that all relate to one theme.

November’s theme is how is training/staff development done at your library. You’ll hear about how training happens at libraries across the country from our contributing authors and you’ll be prompted to contribute your own stories and ideas.

Additionally, if you are a member of the LearnRT email discussion list, you will begin receiving ALA Learning blog posts via email though the email list.

We hope that this new format provides ways for us to share more material and have more conversations among our membership. Feel free to send your comments or thoughts to me at webmaster@alalearning.org.

Lori Reed

Lori Reed, Managing Editor of ALA Learning, has more than 15 years experience in training and is the Learning & Development Coordinator for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library where she oversees the learning & development of a diverse group of staff at twenty libraries. Lori’s passions are performance consulting, learning strategies, and e-learning. Lori is coauthor, with Paul Signorelli, of Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers. Lori also blogs at LoriReed.com and can be reached at lori[at]lorireed.com.

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ALA Conference 2010: Trainers Talking and Acting as Leaders

You can’t, as a few of us suggested during a presentation on trainers as leaders sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) Learning Round Table at the Association’s 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. last week, be in that city without thinking about leadership. The monuments, the government buildings, the sense of history that surrounds you makes it an undeniable presence—something that permeates your entire being as deeply as the hot and humid weather which greeted us.

So it was natural that a few of us—Maurice Coleman, Technical Trainer for Harford County (MD) Public Library and host of the biweekly T is for Training podcasts; Sandra Smith, Learning and Development Manager at the Denver Public Library system; and Louise Whitaker, Training Coordinator from Oklahoma’s Pioneer Library System—chose leadership as the topic for a 90-minute conference session that was part formal presentation, part panel discussion, and lots of interaction with approximately 50 colleagues who joined us for that Sunday morning gathering.

Drawing from interviews Lori Reed and I have been doing with Maurice, Sandra, Louise, and several others for Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers (to be published by ALA Editions in May 2011) to document the leadership roles that workplace learning and performance professionals are assuming in libraries and other organizations across the country, we began with the idea that leadership is positively explosive. When it is effective, it lights up skies. Draws people together. Creates collaborative opportunities and results which are not achieved in any other way.

Leadership, for most of us, doesn’t mean we have to be bombastic. It’s the day to day incremental efforts we make that lead to long-term and sustainable changes within our organizations. And that’s what our colleagues seem to appreciate most from us.

Lori and I, in our interviews and our own experiences, are not finding a one-size-fits-all model of leadership, nor is that what we expected.  Interviewing colleagues from the ALA Learning Roundtable and from other organizations throughout the United States, we are, instead, finding a group of very passionate, creative, and dedicated people doing what they believe is right. And even though Lori couldn’t be with us in Washington, D.C. last week, we were lucky to have a few of the people who have been guiding us so they could share a little of what we’ll be dealing with in the book.

Maurice, for example, discussed how the T is for Training podcasts draw colleagues from a geographical cross section of the country together every other week to discuss workplace learning and performance issues and solutions. Those live shows provide a first-rate forum for the exchange of ideas and have been instrumental in further developing a community of learners among those responsible for fostering organization-wide communities of learning.

Shifting gears a bit, Louise talked about how she revamped the entire way in which evaluations were conducted at Pioneer to determine whether the learning opportunities she was designing and offering to staff were actually producing results of benefit to the library, its staff, and its users.

During the final segment of our discussion, we moved to the heart of library trainers as leaders within their own organizations: Sandra provided examples of how she works from a position at the library management table to help shape and implement workplace learning and performance programs. By consistently working to be part of the decision-making process in terms of designing and offering learning opportunities for staff at Denver Public, she shapes as much as implements what her colleagues need and appreciate in a workplace learning and performance program.

Exchanges between presenters and audience members were as lively and creative as the topic we addressed; in briefly discussing ways to create something sustainable from our initial 90 minutes together rather than having that session be an isolated learning experience, one member of the Learning Round Table offered to collect business cards and set up an online discussion group for those who wanted to continue the conversation.

If that’s not creative leadership in action, I need to go out and do more interviews.

N.B. – For a different view of leadership on display at the 2010 ALA Annual conference, please see Paul’s Leaders Emerging article.

Paul Signorelli

Paul Signorelli is a writer, trainer, presenter, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with clients to successfully facilitate the introduction of new technology into organizations; prepares and presents webinars and other online and onsite learning opportunities for a variety of clients; is actively involved in ALA and ASTD; continues to prepare articles for "American Libraries," the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions Magazine," and other publications; and co-wrote "Workplace Learning & Leadership" with Lori Reed for ALA editions. Paul can be reached at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

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ALA 2010 Training Showcase On YouTube

Howdy from ALA 2010.

It is hot and humid. Really hot and humid. If you are attending ALA and missed the Training Showcase to take a dip in your hotel pool, I understand.  So if you were otherwise engaged in cooling off activities or were unable to make your way here to Washington DC, do not fret.

Each of the exhibitors has a short video giving their “elevator speech” about why they were at the Training Showcase and what they have to offer to the LearnRT community.

There are also a few short Learning RoundTable “recruitment’ videos by some ALA Learning members present at the Showcase.

Here is Stacy as an excellent example of the brief but effective videos. You can find the rest bu clicking the playlist links above.  I hope these videos give you a flavor of the great Learning RoundTable ALA 2010 Training Showcase.

Maurice Coleman

Maurice Coleman, has been Technical Trainer at Harford County (MD) Public Library in North Eastern Maryland for the last 7 years. He has 20 years of experience training all ages how to sensibly use technology, computer hardware and software. He has also trained on effective technology planning and deployment, social media skills, nonprofit organizational development and fundraising, community organizing and presentation skills. He has presented at numerous conferences on topics such as digital personal branding, technology implementation, presentation and training skills, community development and effectively using social media. He hosts the library training podcast T is for Training and writes for the American Library Association’s LearnRT blog ALALearning. For his work he was named a 2010 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and received the Citizens for Maryland Libraries Davis McCarn Technology Award. You can find him on twitter @baldgeekinmd

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Join us today for T is for Training 42 at 2pm Eastern

Join us for our 42nd episode which will most likely include the following subjects: Keynote speeches: Giving and getting – What makes a good-great keynote speech? What tips do people have for giving a not good but great keynote?  What have you liked/not liked about keynotes?

Dealing with Instructional Burnout: How do you or do you deal with training burnout?

The Training Cornucopia: Save the libraries.org ; Plans for CIL’s: The Learning Track and the Live Taping and Movers and Shakers

The full post, including participating instructions is at http://wp.me/piQy4-ay

Hope to see you then.  If you cannot join us, catch all of the episodes in the handy sidebar on the right hand side of the ALA Learning Blog.

Maurice Coleman

Maurice Coleman, has been Technical Trainer at Harford County (MD) Public Library in North Eastern Maryland for the last 7 years. He has 20 years of experience training all ages how to sensibly use technology, computer hardware and software. He has also trained on effective technology planning and deployment, social media skills, nonprofit organizational development and fundraising, community organizing and presentation skills. He has presented at numerous conferences on topics such as digital personal branding, technology implementation, presentation and training skills, community development and effectively using social media. He hosts the library training podcast T is for Training and writes for the American Library Association’s LearnRT blog ALALearning. For his work he was named a 2010 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and received the Citizens for Maryland Libraries Davis McCarn Technology Award. You can find him on twitter @baldgeekinmd

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8 Easy Ways to Get Connected With ALA Learning

I hope you enjoyed getting to know the ALA Learning authors these past few weeks. Tomorrow we return to our regularly scheduled posts bringing you the best training and learning news, information, best practices, and thoughtful discussion.

Today I’d like to share some additional ways for you to get connected with ALA Learning, the official blog of the Learning Round Table of the American Library Association.

  1. Comment and join the discussion on our posts.
  2. Become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ALALearning
  3. Join our Linked In Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2700921&trk=anet_ug_hm
  4. Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ALALearning
  5. Subscribe to our posts or news by RSS or email: http://alalearning.org/subscription-options/
  6. Join the Learning Round Table Email List: http://alalearning.org/about-the-learning-round-table/email-discussion-lists/
  7. Become a Learning Round Table Member–Only $20 on top of your ALA Membership: http://alalearning.org/join/
  8. Plan to join us for one of our events at PLA, ALA Annual, or ALA Midwinter.

As always feel free to comment and contribute to the discussion. If you have a topic to suggest for a post drop me (or any of the authors) a line at webmaster@alalearning.org.

Lori Reed

Lori Reed, Managing Editor of ALA Learning, has more than 15 years experience in training and is the Learning & Development Coordinator for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library where she oversees the learning & development of a diverse group of staff at twenty libraries. Lori’s passions are performance consulting, learning strategies, and e-learning. Lori is coauthor, with Paul Signorelli, of Workplace Learning and Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers. Lori also blogs at LoriReed.com and can be reached at lori[at]lorireed.com.

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