I was very interested in attending this presentation because of the SCLS/OWLS/Winnefox very successful collaborative Project Play. I was curious to find out how other libraries have used the same model and was hoping for ideas on where to take these types of projects in the future.
Michael Stephens, Assistant Professor at Dominican University GSLIS was the main presenter for the program. You may recognize Michael's name as he's the author of Web 2.0 and Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software (we have this in the Professional collection) and blogs at Tame The Web. He's also a regular contributor to many journals.
Michael presented the results of his research he conducted in Australia with Warren Cheatham, Coordinator Digital and Electronic Library Service, City Libraries, Townsville in Queensland. While I took lots of notes and wrote down many statistics, I really want to share with you the main things I took away from this program. The original Learning 2.0 program has been replicated many, many times throughout the world and is an effective way to teach staff about new technologies.
One of the things I was looking for in this program was the "next step" or how to continue the learning without the formal project. For example, now that Project Play is over - where do we go from here? Here are a couple of ideas that I hope to incorporate into the SCLS CE program:
- Have a Champion - for example one person learns Flickr or another program really well. They would become the Champion for that topic and the one other staff or participants could go to for questions
- Promote Core Values - extend your library services using these tools
- Develop your own personal learning network - blogs, twitter followers, and include people you don't agree with as it helps to get you thinking
- Be human - be kind as it's really about two people talking and connecting
- Have fun
- Break down barriers - barrier is anything (or anyone) that is preventing the learning program from happening
- It's okay to fail - we often learn more from our mistakes (also heard that in the Accidental Technology Trainer program)
- Keep it going - add new technologies, programs, etc. as technology evolves so should the project
And, Michael also reinforced my need to read A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink (just downloaded the audiobook from Overdrive).
You can find out more about Michael's research here and the slides from the presentation are here.
