training

I coordinate the NetMaster program for the King County Library System. NetMasters are volunteer computer instructors who lead classes in the community libraries based on existing curriculum. Potential volunteers apply via our website and I contact them for orientation and training—this process is manageable, but does keep me pretty busy. Here is how it goes:

According to Liz (our system administrator), everything good comes from Lifehacker.com...and that is where she found Jing (http://www.jingproject.com/).  As the Web site says, "Use Jing to capture anything you see on your computer screen and share it instantly...as an image or short movie."  

Lori Reed is most likely a familiar name to you. She's a regular contributor to TechSoup for Libraries and MaintainIT. She recently facilitated an online class for NEFLIN, "Gaming in Libraries", which was based on content from the MaintainIT Cookbook, Planning for Success. I talked to Lori after the session and asked her how it went. Here's her reply.

Jean Montgomery, the Network Administrator at the Superiorland Library Cooperative in Michigan created a nifty flash video that chronicles how her cooperative supports libraries distributed over the Upper Peninsula. Jean covers many topics, sharing how her organization uses a range of tools to keep in contact and offer services without breaking the bank or spending time behind the wheel.

TechSoup's GreenTech Initiative is hosting a month-long event on reducing travel without breaking the bank. The focus this week is on online training, and since the MaintainIT Project has spent a lot of time on this topic, I thought I'd take this opportunity to gather some choice resources, webinar archives, and articles in one place.

Earlier this week, I blogged a bit about my week in Kentucky and I have a few more posts from that trip in the works. I was there to provide "Taking on Technology" workshops with Kendra Morgan (TechAtlas). One of the things we talked about during the day was 2.0 technologies. We played 2.0 Bingo (something I've blogged about here before) and we also introduced groups to the Common Craft videos (on RSS, on Twitter, etc...). 

We had another fantastic train-the-trainer webinar today facilitated by the amazing Brenda Hough.

Today I played BINGO at work!

This question was asked on publib about a month ago but there weren’t many answers. Please contribute by posting your tips in the comments! Lots of very practical advice for planning, recruitment, selection and supervision of volunteers can be found in one of the MaintainIT Project's free resources, Chapter 3 of the cookbook for Small and Rural Libraries.

Each month, we host a MaintainIT webinar for trainers. The goal is to help people think about how to use the MaintainIT resources in the training they are providing. We're hosting a train-the-trainer webinar tomorrow and in this one, we will focus on ideas for using MaintainIT resources in training that you provide online.