A total of 1965 people registered or attended the event and 1082 logged in for at least one of the sessions. Many of those who logged in were doing so in order for staff in their library to join a Viewing Party. See the long list of Viewing Parties!. A special thank you to you viewing party hosts, and sorry if we didn’t get you on the list.

Also a special thanks to our sponsoring WebJunction Partner States who brought over 889 registrants and 500 attendees to the conference and who continue to support the networking and collaboration critical to the success of WebJunction’s online learning!

Many others are represented in the list of top 20 participating states:

And 90 participants represent these cities and countries around the globe:

Here’s the breakdown of the many library types represented:

As you can see from the broad representation across the globe and across the types of libraries you work in, the topics presented are indeed universal. From brain development to instructional design, from creating videos to creating community, the presentations were top-notch and inspirational. Betha provides an excellent summary of the 2 days in her post, Two-day online conference was a brain booster on the Learning Round Table Blog and you can view all the live-blogging we did here on BlogJunction. And be sure to check out the tweet archive for #learntrends!

I’d like to personally thank all of the planners (especially Sharon and Mary Beth from the LearningRT!), presenters, emcees, producers, viewing party hosts and all other participants, for joining the conference and for contributing to the success of WebJunction’s third online conference! I look forward to connecting with all of you in future online events.

Conference home »

Buffy is intent on shifting the perception of the library, to bring back the human element and help people find themselves in the story of library. It’s about keeping the best of what we have always done, no matter what type of library, and amplifying the aspect of the library as learning space and a communal space. She explored a variety of ways to weave in the talents and passions of patrons to create a more interesting concept of what the library means—as a place for “self-excavation” and  discovery.

Buffy channels the thought leadership of Dr. David Lankes and Dr. Henry Jenkins, both of whom have promoted the concept of “participatory librarianship” and identified the conditions to make a learning space participatory. Jenkins believes that “relationships are the cornerstone of libraries and participation.”

Buffy is her own verb as she demonstrated the range of items in her participatory toolbox that she has deployed to achieve maximum participation with her students and to “ignite the conversation”:

1. Google forms: to invite a conversation  through survey  and assessment and collect data to adjust direction and programs.
2. Poll Everywhere: to allow learners to use mobile devices to participate by voting in real time and text polling to brainstorm ideas.
3. Polldaddy: embed polls in a website to collect ongoing input on what’s working (or not); get user input on design and selection of learning resources and strategies.
4. Blogging platforms and videos:  to celebrate student voices and talents and to bring in the larger (global) community with the library as the funnel.
5. Digital storytelling: to tell multi-generational stories and build essential social connections as patrons explore stories from the community.
6. Information dashboards: to help people become curators of knowledge and build collections of digital resources and share original content. (tools like Netvibes and Symbaloo)

There’s a lot more practical and inspiring detail in the archive. Watch for it to be posted Friday.

So let’s start the “Get libraried!” campaign. (thanks Zola for that bit of brilliance.)

What will you do to invite participation, to foster shared ownership, to make your library the place that both creates the conversation and thrives at the center of the conversation?

A few years ago, the South Dakota state library offered self-paced “23 Things” training based on Helene Blowers now well-known model that helped library staff become familiar with a host of online tools.

Jane and Julie thought, why not use a similar model, but for training staff on state library subscription databases? This would take a rather dry, often intimidating subject (databases) and blend it with an interactive training approach that also encourages staff to make use of Web 2.0 tools. They also were excited that this training could reach out to many different types of learners, in different types of libraries and staff roles and with different ability levels. Their proposal was accepted, and they have done three rounds of the training.

They gave us lots of tips about how they put the program together. A key point they noted up front: they used free tools for the whole things, including:

Blogger
Google Docs
SurveyMonkey
online handouts
vendor tutorials

They stressed that these are not the only free tools available, and other examples were shared by the audience in Chat, such as WordPress, Jing, WikiSpaces, and more.

Their steps for launching the program included:

- Publicity. They used listservs, in-person announcements, andtargeted emails to people who had taken live e-resources training before, and previous challengees.

- Registration. They used a form on Google Docs, created a pretest and post-challenge survey on Survey Monkey

- Lessons. They created 10 lessons, which were released each week for 11 weeks. Each lesson contained a brief intro to provide context, info about the e-resource, and a discovery exercise

- Blogs. Participants created blogs, which added to the trainers’ RSS feed readers and the state library blogroll. These posts included answers to participants’ discovery exercises and comments about the challenge.
- Completion. Post-challenge surveys, analysis, and tweaking of the program based on feedback and results.

The costs associated with the program were really associated with staff time. Time to set up, promote, manage and monitor the program. Because they incorporated into their workday, so it is hard for them to say how much total time it took.

Setup took the most time, to decide structure, but this effort has decreased with each new round.

Advice and Caveats:
Don’t go it alone–have a team of 2 or 3 people.
Setting up the blogs was a difficult step for many participants
Technical issues could create hiccups, such as authentication issues that prevented access to databases.

Results?
Participants reported new knowledge and especially their confidence with e-resources. This led to increased enthusiasm and advocacy about the program went talking with stakeholders in the community. They showed some graphed results from their pre and post surveys that dramatically demonstrated the shift in comfort level.

They’ve opened up the program to school teachers in the summer, who gave additional perspective about the training and considered how they wanted to incorporate into the classroom. The audience asked, why not adapt it for patron and student training as well? We’ll be curious to see if anyone takes that ball and runs with it–let us know your results!

In the Chat and on Twitter, the audience pushed back on the time thing: those who had tried to participate in 23 Things programs found they couldn’t keep up with the challenge under competing priorities. The presenters said that how much the libraries support the program, if they deliberately permit staff to set aside time for it. CE credit is also a motivator. Individual staff’s intrinsic motivation for continuous learning can also be a factor.

The stumpiest question asked during the Q&A section at the end was “Why 23?” The answer, provided by someone in the audience, was “It was based on Stephen Abrams 43 Folders”…I am surprised there wasn’t a follow-up question, “Why 43?”

The audience was asked, What immediate next step can you take based on the information you learned in this session? Lots of responses: we suggest you look at the Chat to get inspired to action for your library!

Wow, just one more session to go!

Thank you to Crystal Schimpf, Kieran Hixon, and Nancy Trimm for their presentation, Tech Training Skills for 21st Century Library Staff.

With 631 people in the room (and many others viewing as a group under one name), we all were asked to answer a poll on the whiteboard about roles in the library: Did we primarily assist public, train staff, or supervise staff? It quickly turned into a crazy quilt of color, as shown here:

The focus is on tech training because of libraries key role in providing internet. 73% of rural libraries are the ONLY provider of free internet. Two thirds have received 1:1 help from library staff, and 14% attended computer training at the library.

Attendees shared in Chat about how they help people with technology, and the responses showed the huge range in depth and breadth of experience library staff have with technology, from hardware, to software, to the web and email, to databases, and more. Basically, librarians must be prepared to be skilled in both IT and teaching competencies.

The bulk of the presentation then answered the following questions:

What are competencies?

Why are they valuable for library tech trainers?

what are the competencies for library tech trainers?

How do we support competency-based training?

In the spirit of not reinventing the wheel, the group offered Colorado State Library’s own tech trainer competencies for all to ripoff and reuse. You can find those here: http://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org/btop/content/technology-trainer-competencies

On Twitter, Ohio Public Library core competencies were also shared: http://t.co/LZLuIPl

After the main presentation by the three, there was ample time for Q&A. As I was wrestling with Twitter and Facebook lags during that time, I missed a lot of the great questions, but here are some:

Q: How do you keep up with users on the forefront without neglecting those who are lagging behind?

Assist the laggers with their immediate needs but give them encouragement and orientation to more current technology, perhaps as a follow-up one-on-one. Other suggestions were posted to chat.

Q: How do you deal with situations when people come with technology that you are not familiar with?

If you don’t know about it, think of it with other reference questions: You might not have the answer, but you should understand where to find the answer. Also, it might alleviate the anxiety of the person asking if you admit that you don’t know the answer but “let’s learn together”.

Q: How did you go about developing the competencies?

They did a literature review of what competency sets were already published. Created drafts and circulated for review and feedback.

Q: How do you train reluctant or time-stretched staff?

Kieran mentioned that in a small, rural library, training while doing frontline patron services is a necessity. Have to keep an eye on how it will help in the long run, allow for on-the-job training (not sequestered in a classroom), make it short bites of training, and use immediate incentives like treats.

Then the presenters turned it around and asked a couple questions of the audience to reflect on:

How can you support the learning needs of technology training in your organization?

How has your role in the library change because of technology? What training do you need to support your new technology-related duties?

Check out the chat log when the archive is posted later today, to see some of the responses, as well as the lively conversation on Twitter at #learntrends.

Char invited all the participants (>600) to go hogwild in the Chat, to keep it as interactive as possible–and everyone took to that idea like ducks to water. Twitter was also very busy (#learntrends).

Char started with a suggestion that we take a positive and persevering attitude toward training, even though we may be challenged by difficult economic and budgetary conditions.

She then introduced the idea of “the Library Educator”–specifically, that no matter your job description, you are involved in learning. But this concept is not widely recognized: we tend to get trained on what to teach but not how to teach. Char shared a poll she did that showed that a majority library staff feel their MLIS education did not adequately prepare them to design and delivery instruction. Chat responses seemed to indicate that this was a sentiment shared by session attendees as well–some mentioned that they did draw upon prior experience as a teacher once they entered the library profession.

She acknowledged that huge amount of anxiety can grip new or undertrained instructors. We may often find ourselves expected to teach without all the formal education and training, certification and credentials that most teachers get.

A big problem is that there is assumption that librarians are not teachers. This affects how we are perceived when we are in a learning interaction on the job. How do you change those perceptions?

And what about your perceptions of learners? Do you believe that they can be inspired by a teaching interaction?

We were invited to close our eyes and conjure up our best teacher ever. Then we burned up the Chat window with descriptions of the qualities of that teacher.

Then, we were asked to think of our worst teacher and chat about that. Wow, the adjectives posted were very vivid. It was obvious that these terrible learning experiences still resonated with us.

The point was, we already know what makes a good and a bad teacher, from our own learning experiences. Avoid the bad, emulate the good qualities, and absorb them into your teaching identity.

She posited a nice metaphor of “librarians as an indicator species” in the sense of being emblematic of the environment, and asked us to post to chat what librarians were indicators of. Responses ranged from “tote bags” to “democracy.”

The meat of the session was devoted to delving into the pillars of Instructional Literacy: a combination of (1) reflective practice, (2) educational theory–learning, teaching, and curriculum theory; (3) teaching technologies; and (4) instructional design (systematic planning makes for a better learning experience). Added together, the outcome is teaching effectiveness.

Reflective Practice is a commitment to be aware of improving your teaching and training strategies, Continuous incremental improvement. Practical aspects of this practice are:

1. Metacognition: thinking about thinking, self-awareness, incremental improvement

– do simple small exercises after doing an instruction. Three question reflection. What went well, what bombed, what should I follow up on?
–concept/curriculum map: break down a core idea into parts to understand it better (mindomo.com)
–buid a teaching portfolio of assignments, handouts, materials in an organized storage.

2. Gleaning:

– capture things that happen for posterity: recordings, whiteboard capture, screenshots, photos of students, colleagues, environs

3. Collaboration
– communities of Practice: build in fun activities, make it visible, get engaged with it

Be sure to view the archived recording when it is posted so that you can see all the great Chat and get the many details that I have not included in this summary!