We’ll miss you Helene!

Tomorrow will be a difficult day as we say goodbye to Helene with a party and hopefully a nice send off from Charlotte. If you have any thoughts or wishes you’d like to share, send them my way and I’ll pass them on to her. There will be lots of food and some music from Dewey and the Decibels.

Wow it’s been a long journey and after reading over 200 blogs every day for Learning 2.0, I can breathe a sigh of relief and hopefully clear up my Bloglines account!

So at the end of the journey 222 staff completed the 23 things and many more are following along around the world.

Want to see who won the laptop. Watch and see…

Congratulations! I wish I could have been there to see the surprise!

There are 11 days left for PLCMC staff to complete Learning 2.0 and the 23 things and earn their reward of an MP3 player. However, learning does not really ever end.

To those staff who will not, for whatever reason, be able to complete all 23 things by October 31st, I hope that you will complete the activity anyway at your own pace.

Do you need some motivation to get back on track? Here are some tips for Learning 2.0:

• Read all of Helene’s blog posts and tutorials and listen to the podcasts. It might be helpful to print them out one at a time so that you can read them when you don’t have access to a computer. Each post will give you the basics of what you need to complete the task.
• Don’t try to over do it. Sure other people have gone above and beyond but that does not mean that you have to. Just do what is required for each post and you can go back later to play with the things you like the best.
• Remember that this is a self-discovery process and that the journey is just as important as the final reward. There is a reason why there were no official classes or cheat sheets for this program. Each and every person has the ability to complete all of these activities. Don’t believe me? Ask Rosemary Lands! Believe in yourself and believe that you can do this. I hope that after Learning 2.o we will see a big shift in the way we think about training.
• If you need help, ask! You are not alone. Over 100 staff have already completed this journey. Feel free to call, e-mail me, or if you are at Main Library stop by my desk. I’ve been surprised at how few people have asked me for help, but I am so proud to see other staff stepping up to the plate and helping other staff.
• Support and encourage each other! Many departments that have already completed Learning 2.0 have said the biggest reward is the sense of community that has been established. Use this community to your advantage.
• Have fun! If you are not having fun you are missing the point. Life is too short to not have fun!

Helene personally delivered my MP3 player today. Luckily it came with instructions. I am not one who likes to read instructions, but I couldn’t have figured out how to work the player without them.

The first thing I did was download an audiobook. I have been chained by headphones to a computer for too long and the old MP3 player that I have at home does not have enough memory for even a short audiobook. Thank goodness this player has 1 GB of memory! Thank you Helene!

Some things to note for those who are going to download audiobooks from NetLibrary:

• After you set up your NetLibrary account via the Online Resources page, log out, and from now on go directly to netlibrary.com to log in. If you access NetLibrary via the Online Resources page you are going to be routed through a proxy server at Main Library. If this happens your connection will be so slow that you will have little patience in waiting for a download–not to mention unnecessarily tying up our bandwidth!
• Go to the AudioBooks page on PLCMC. There is a link to Downloading an Audiobook to a Portable Player that will show you how to get the audiobook from Windows Media Player to the MP3 player. I had a hard time finding the book because it downloaded to a temporary file, but once I found it and moved it to the Desktop everything went smoothly.

The ear buds were a little awkward at first and I thought they were going to fall out of my ears, but as long as I don’t pull on the wires they stay in.

So there are 19 days left for PLCMC staff to earn an MP3 player. For those who have not jumped on board yet, what are you waiting for? You have over 200 staff who have completed all 23 things that can help you! Come on in the water is just fine!

Wow have 9 weeks gone by already?

I knew this was a great idea from the moment Helene told me about it. I am also surprised at how many other libraries have picked up the idea and caught on. Every time I talk to someone from another library system the first thing I hear is, “Oh you guys are the ones that started the Learning 2.0 thing…”

Like Salad Days mentions it was really great to see a shift in the attitudes of some co-workers. I know of one person in particular (you know who you are) who I never thought would come to love technology.

I would say that the program was a huge success. What worked:

• The fact that the entire program was created and participants used only free Web 2.0 tools that are readily available to anyone. I think this is a huge benefit and one of the things that has made other libraries so interested in following along with this program.
• Little instruction. There were no classes and only two tutorials. This was truly an exercise in self-learning and discovery. Staff relied on each other for help and hopefully gained more confidence in themselves and in other staff as both learners and instructors. I heard some comments that the instructions were too vague, but I think that if they were more specific it might have defeated the purpose of the activities.
• Creative scheduling at branches. I was so impressed when I heard that reference staff from Mint Hill were covering the desk for circulation staff so that circulation staff had time to blog. Way to go Mint Hill!

What could be improved:

• Accommodations for staff who were not ready for this level of Web 2.0. I can see clearly now that if you learn a skill you must continue to use it or you will forget. Whose responsibility is it to make sure that learners continue to practice skills that they learn? The trainer? The learner? The supervisor? In Core Competencies training last year all staff learned the basics of using the Internet, but some staff never used the Internet past the Core Competencies training. In the beginning they were very excited and enthusiastic about Learning 2.0 but quickly became frustrated when they realized they did not have the basic skills needed to participate. I wish that I would have had more time to work with these people one on one to help them more. Now that Learning 2.0 is wrapping up, how will we keep staff interested in Web 2.0?

Other thoughts:

• I’ve heard a lot of buzz and excitement around the incentives for this program. I think it is great that we are able to offer these, but I also hope that more staff come away from this feeling that the learning and experience was enough of an incentive to participate, and that they will participate in more self-directed learning in the future. Jersey Girl expressed this really well in her final post:
  

  I have to admit that in the beginning an MP3 player was the end in my mind. But along the way I learned that that was not all I was going to achieve when I finished this program. I learned about myself and what I can accomplish and I learned about my coworkers and what interests them in and outside of work. I also got to meet some people at other branches, through their blogs, that I might not have met otherwise. I learned that you can start out on one path expecting one thing and meander along to find the end is not what you expected, but that it is still okay. That to me is a great ending.

  We will soon be offering opportunities for staff to participate in live online training. I hope that the experiences with Learning 2.0 have helped to prepare and make staff feel more comfortable in trying out another new learning environment.

I’ve used NetLibrary for a few years for both ebooks and audiobooks so what interested me most about this particular Learning 2.0 thing was not really NetLibrary but the tool that Mary Kyle of ImaginOn used to create the tutorial.

It’s amazing how many free tools are out there for trainers (and everyone else) to use and so hard to keep up with them all!

I’ve listened to podcasts for a while now, but usually I listen to them on my PC. This semester at school I am taking a music class and our professor has a weekly podcast that we have to subscribe to. I was really impressed by this as most online training through universities is not very engaging.

I was a little shocked a few months ago when my husband sent me a link to a video of me on YouTube at a recent visit to the zoo. First of all there was the fact that I didn’t realize that I was being recorded. Then there was the fact that this video is up on the Internet for anyone to see. A little bizarre. However once you get over the privacy issue it is kind of fun.

Today I heard that there is a new Tickle Me Elmo doll coming out for Christmas. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about and what you get for the $200 + price tag on eBay. So I did a quick search in YouTube and here it is…TMX Elmo:

I was surprised after looking at this list how many of these tools I have already used: Technorati, Bloglines, Craigslist, Writely, ThinkFree Office, HipCal, Flickr, FaceBook, MySpace, Deliscious, Rollyo, YouTube, PBWiki, JotSpot.

Wow! I did not even realize some of these were “Web 2.0.” Of course Web 2.0 is just a name. It seems like more and more of what has become popular on the Internet are ways to connect to people. After years and years of the Internet and computers having the nerd or geek stigma, it is becoming cool to be online and to use computers. When I started college more than a decade ago I never heard the phrases “Facebook me” or “Google it” and I typed all my papers on a typewriter. Now these phrases are a part of the every day language and I can email assignments to my professors. Not only do I not have to print papers out on paper, but for some classes I don’t even have to have a book–the materials are all available online.

Back to my point. For years computers and video games were to blame for alienating people. Now these tools are providing channels for people to connect in ways that we never imagined. Through this blog I have “met” a librarian in Australia. Because of the Internet I am able to complete a degree from a university that I have never seen or been to. I am taking a class from a professor who lives in another state. There are students living as far away as Saudi Arabia. My teaching partner for another online class lives in a different time zone. I can use Skype and call anyone in my family at any time of day…for free. The world seems smaller, but the opportunities seem endless!