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Two-day online conference was a brain booster

August 12, 2011 By

I spent 7 hours a day for two days in an overly air-conditioned, windowless room and I emerged energized and refreshed! Trends in Library Training and Learning, the online conference resulting from the power partnership of WebJunction and the Learning Round Table, was stimulating and boundary-stretching, capturing and holding the attention of 500-700+ viewers per session.  The lineup of presenters was top-notch. The visuals were often stunning. The chat window was often so active, it was dizzying. Some participants have said it was the best online conference they had ever attended—so absorbing in fact that multi-tasking was set aside for the duration.

WebJunction staff (Jennifer, Sharon S, Betha) live-blogged all of the sessions.

T is for Training devoted today’s podcast (titled I forgot my underwear) to an enlightening (and funny) debrief from the perspective of presenters, attendees and organizers.

Thanks to the wonders of webinar technology, you can still savor the selection of presentations through the archived recordings.

Day ONE:

Day TWO:

Not only can you immerse yourself in the conference experience, you can organize a viewing party to watch the archives together. The viewing party guide and the session discussion questions will enrich the event.

Betha Gutsche

Betha Gutsche has been a virtual librarian ever since receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington Information School. Immersed in the online community of WebJunction, she has cultivated community connections through forums, live online events, and writing stories about the library community. She has delved into e-learning design, curriculum development, needs assessment, and all things connected to social learning in the online world. Betha is the editor-in-chief of the Competency Index for the Library Field. She is now the manager of Project Compass, a program working with public libraries to augment their service to communities impacted by tough times. Underneath it all, Betha is an artist and loves to raise awareness of visual literacy and introduce people to the power of image.

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Register now for Trends in Library Training and Learning

June 2, 2011 By

Conference SpeakersRegistration is now open for Trends in Library Training and Learning: Developing Staff Skills for the 21st Century. WebJunction will be hosting this free online conference in partnership with the Learning Roundtable on August 10-11, 2011.

This event is packed with incredible presenters, including keynote speakers Jay Turner from Georgia Public Library Service, and Char Booth from the Claremont Colleges. The full schedule with session descriptions and presenter bios is now available.

Register now for this great event! You may also be interested in coordinating a viewing party at your library to engage staff, generate discussion and help to make this event locally relevant.

Follow the conversation about the conference on Twitter with the hashtag #learntrends!

Mary Beth Faccioli

Mary Beth Faccioli, MLIS is the Instructional Design and Technology Senior Consultant at the Colorado State Library.

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Free Online Conference – Trends in Library Training and Learning: Developing Staff Skills for the 21st Century

May 4, 2011 By

ALA Learning Round Table and OCLC’s WebJunction
collaborate to offer free online conference

Trends in Library Training and Learning: Developing Staff Skills for the 21st Century program is set for August 10–11

WebJunction, OCLC’s online learning community for library staff, and the ALA Learning Round Table, which promotes quality continuing education for all library personnel, will team up to offer a free, online learning and training conference August 10–11, 2011.

The conference, to include eight one-hour sessions over two days, will be hosted using the WebEx web conferencing tool, which will provide attendees with easy online access to all live sessions and the ability to interact with other attendees and presenters using text-based chat. Registration will open by June 1 when full conference details are available on WebJunction.org.

“Libraries are changing quickly and staff need more training than ever to navigate nimbly through change,” said Sharon Morris, ALA Learning Round Table President 2010–11. “This conference will help library trainers, managers and staff to find new ways to train, learn and keep up. The Learning Round Table members are excited to be working with WebJunction on this cutting-edge online conference.”

Jay TurnerJay Turner, a leader in developing creative e-learning solutions for libraries, will serve as keynote speaker for the conference. Mr. Turner serves on the Learning Round Table Board and is the training manager for the Gwinnett County Public Library until May 13. He will then become the new Director of Continuing Education for the Georgia Public Library Service. Mr. Turner was selected as an ALA Emerging Leader in 2008 and is also active in the Public Library Association.

Session presenters will provide practical solutions for libraries looking to implement both staff and patron training using innovative learning techniques that include formal and informal, and online and face-to-face methods. Topics will be particularly relevant to public libraries, but all library staff are welcome and encouraged to attend. Session details will be made available on WebJunction.org in the coming weeks.

With tight training and travel budgets, this free conference provides library staff an easy and affordable opportunity to learn from and network with both the WebJunction and Learning Round Table communities. Anyone unable to attend the live sessions will be able to view the recorded presentations that will be archived on WebJunction.org after the conference. Full session archives from WebJunction’s two 2010 online conferences are also available to view on WebJunction.org.

About the ALA Learning Round Table

The Learning Round Table of the American Library Association promotes quality continuing education for all library personnel. The Learning Round Table helps library staff network with other continuing education providers, serves as a source for continuing education assistance and advocates for quality library continuing education at both the local and national levels. More information, including training resources and membership opportunities, is available at www.alalearning.org.

About WebJunction

WebJunction is the online learning community for librarians and library staff. We provide information, insights, and online learning relevant to staff, their organizations, and the library field as a whole as part of our mission to foster collaboration and partnership within the library community. WebJunction is supported in part by OCLC, grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services, partners in state library agencies and other library systems and organizations, and by the library community. Launched in 2003, WebJunction is based in Seattle, Washington and Dublin, Ohio. More information is available at www.webjunction.org.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org. For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

A PDF version of the press release is available at: http://alalearning.org/about/press/

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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Free Online Conference LearnTrends2009

October 19, 2009 By

From the LearnTrends Web site:


LearnTrends 2009 – The Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations Conference

November 17-19, 2009 | Online | Free


The theme/focus this year is on Convergence in Workplace Learning. We will bring together people who look at different aspects of learning and knowledge work to understand better what’s going on in those areas and how we should be thinking about this holistically.


As always, this conference is about getting together interesting people who bring a slightly different perspective and have meaningful conversation around innovation in workplace learning. We typically get more than a thousand people signed up and at least a hundred in each session.


To register, you must first register on the LearnTrends community and then register on the Conference Event Page.


Conference Hashtag: #learntrends

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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Link: How to Present When People Are Twittering

February 25, 2009 By

A big thanks to Janie Hermann for bringing this great article to our attention: How to Present When People Are Twittering.

twitter2Olivia Mitchell goes against the conventional wisdom and points out eight benefits to having an active twitter back-channel among your participants and then she takes one step further and suggests that there are even benefits to having your own Twitter back-channel while presenting!

Mitchell has some great advice for managing that back channel and concludes:

Presenting while people are twittering is challenging. But isn’t it better to get that feedback in real-time when you can do something to retrieve the situation – than wait till you read the evaluation sheets a few days after the conference – and find that you bombed?

Peter Bromberg

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Conference on Learning Announcement

February 20, 2008 By

THE FIFTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LEARNING The University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 3-6 June 2008: http://www.LearningConference.com

The International Conference on Learning is for any person with an interest in, and concern for, education at any of its level – from early childhood, to schools, to higher education – and lifelong learning in any of its sites, from home to school to university to the workplace.

Main speakers include James R. Gavelek, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Juana M. Sancho Gil, Educational Technology Professor at the University of Barcelona; Susan R. Goldman, Chair of the Governing Board of the Society for Text and Discourse; Fernando Hernandez, Professor in the Unit of Art Education at the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Barcelona; James W. Pellegrino, Distinguished Professor in Psychology and Education and Co-Director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Salim Vally, Senior Researcher at the Education Policy Unit, School of Education, University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.

The Conference will also include numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. We would particularly like to invite you to respond to the Conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed International Journal of Learning. If you are unable to attend the Conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in this fully refereed academic Journal, as well as access to the electronic version of the Conference proceedings.

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 13 March 2008. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of submission. Full details of the Conference, including an online proposal submission form, are to be found at the Conference website – http://www.LearningConference.com

Peter Bromberg

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