Thanks to Cindi for sharing the E-Learning Council site with me! This post is an example of the type of thing I’m seeing here and finding interesting as I think about games and play and learning and adults.
Let’s “Play, Learn, Innovate”
A few of us are going to get together at NEKLS on Tuesday, June 7th, to participate in the free OCLC symposium, “Play, Learn Innovate”. If you’re nearby, you’re welcome to join us (bring your lunch – we’re doing this brown bag style).
Looking at the title of this symposium and the descriptions of the sessions, I feel happy. I know it’s going to be interesting and probably inspiring. It makes me feel good to think about it. As a creator of learning opportunities, I am going to try to remember this feeling and to make it a goal to inspire it in people who are attending workshops, trainings, and meetings that I help coordinate. If play is the way to the future, then the learning opportunities that help prepare us for that future should be enjoyable, too!
Book Review: A New Culture of Learning
Last week I spent 4 hours standing in a line at the airport, only to not be able to fly out at all. Thank goodness I had my Nook with me and made lots of progress on Hunger Games. Thanks to Heather Braum, I also had A New Culture of Learning by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown with me and was able to read it, too. At only 137 pages, it was a quick read, but very affirming. If you’re a trainer or an educator and you’re thinking about the future, I recommend this book.
If travel plans had gone as scheduled, I was on my way to Houston to deliver a workshop on technology training. The workshop was created in collaboration with Stephanie Gerding, my friend and the author of The Accidental Technology Trainer. Stephanie and I have known each other for a long time now and our approach to training is very similar. The ideas in the New Culture of Learning really fit with the active approach to technology training that we discuss. Many of the ideas in the book were not new to me, however, the final chapter covered Game Theory and I realized this is something about which I would like to learn more (it also had me thinking about starting to play World of Warcraft!!). If you have resource suggestions for reading more on this, I’d love to hear them.
Resources:
Week Two: Online Communities
This is my post for the second week in our 23 Things Kansas project.
- What Online Community did you choose? What do you like most about it?
I will talk about Facebook, since it’s the online community I use the most. I think the thing I like best about Facebook is photos. Another thing I really like is the merging of my world’s (people from high school, people from undergrad, people from different places I have lived, relatives, etc.). At first it was disconcerting, to have them all of those pieces of me together in one place, but now I think it’s cool. - How have you used this Community? How do you see yourself using it in the future?
I find myself using it more and more to send messages instead of email. It’s easier to type in someone’s name in Facebook than it is to find their email address. I feel like I am more in touch with many people, too, because I can leave them a brief comment or even just like something they have posted. - Can you see your library using this Online Community? How?
I work for the Northeast Kansas Library System and we’re already successfully using Facebook. Many of our member librarians are on Facebook. From our NEKLS facebook page, we can post about NEKLS events and happenings (it automatically receives feeds from our blogs). - Add a link to your blog to your Online Community profile so others can find you.
Week One: Blogging
I’m going to be participating in 23 Things Kansas, the new online learning program inspired by Helene Blowers. All participants will use a blog to track their progress.
Today, the program kicked off with lesson one – written by Erin Downey Howerton. It’s all about blogging. I’ve been blogging since 2002 or 2003, but have not been very good about keeping up lately (distracted by Twitter and Facebook). I’m hoping that participating in 23 Things Kansas will inspire me to post more regularly!
Good luck to all participants! Have fun with it 
Summer Reading and Technology Learning
“Everything you need to know about training you learned in summer reading programs: what if technology trainers used some of the paths already forged by summer reading program planners?”
Computers in Libraries | September 1, 2003| Hough, Brenda
It’s 7 years later and I still am wishing for this. I still think we could benefit from more ongoing collaboration around tech training. The 23 Things style programs have done something like this for staff training, but I hear libraries wishing for something for public training, too. I have heard that a few libraries have adopted the 23 things model for public training. I think WJ would be a great place to centralize patron technology training resources.There are resources there for patron training, but assembling them into a program (a summer reading style program)… that would be exciting.
Technology Concepts Made Simple – a webinar
I love the Common Craft videos. They so “get it”… the way people learn, the things people need to know to get started, etc. I aspire to be like them in the training I put together, too.
TechSoup for Libraries is hosting a webinar next week, during which Stephanie Gerding will be interviewing Lee LeFever from Common Craft. I think it’s one I don’t want to miss.
Fellow Kansans — K-LIRT Workshop
The Kansas Library Instruction Roundtable is providing a summer workshop on July 17th. This year’s topic: Teaching Strategies from a Technological Viewpoint. Anyone who is providing library instruction is invited to attend. And at only $30/$40 for the full day (including parking and a meal)… it’s a steal!
It’s a Conversation
I have spent the morning reading a report about the Mindspot project, from the Aarhus Library in Denmark. If you’re not ready to read the 33 page report (it’s worth your time…), then take a peek at this YouTube video first, Mindspot the Movie: The Library as a Universe.
The project is all about turning the library into an “interesting and relevant partner in the lives of young people.” It is is one of the best examples of being “user-centered” that I have seen. It’s exciting to see this type of approach in practice!
The book I am writing is about creating user centered technology services in libraries and this project represents the ideas I’m trying to express… continuous conversation. Hmm… now I just need to find a way to travel to Denmark to visit this library.
Home Work
I have worked from home for over a year now, so was very interested in Jonathan Mead’s Zen Habits post, “Escape the Cubicle Farm: Top Ten Reasons to Work from Home“. I agree with all of his points and really feel most productive with this lifestyle.
Here’s what I’m up to these days. I’m working on the book right now (manuscript due July 1st) and am also doing some independent consulting (for TechSoup, for the State Library of Kansas, for NEKLS, etc) and have some workshops and presentations scheduled, too (for SWKLS, for SWFLN, for Johnson County, etc). I’ll hopefully be doing some teaching, too,which would be great. It’s going to be interesting, juggling all of these different things instead of focusing on one primary job, so expect more posts about time management and project management over the next months. I’ll be learning as I go!
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing. ~~ Yeats
