I’ve been following the FCC’s National Broadband Plans since they were sent to Congress.  I’ve been excited about the possibility of the Digital Literacy Corps.  However when reviewing the Broadband Action Agenda I feel a little uneasy.  I see no reference to training or instruction.  While I agree on the importance of access to broadband I’m concerned about lack of attention to instruction. This sort of training and funding are desperately needed.  Dumping broadband access on communities that can’t afford a computer or the monthly fee for high speed access and without any instruction is like giving  a 13 year a Ferrari, its a great car but he can’t afford the gas and he don’t know how to drive it.  Its basically worthless.

At the VERY least there should be mention of public libraries.  They are the ones who will be providing access to this wonderful broadband to people who can’t afford the device or the connection fee. It also falls upon them to provide the training and instruction.  Broadband is wonderful but we are not born knowing how to use the internet, not even so called digital natives.

I hope I’m wrong, I hope I’m missing something and someone will point it out to me and I’ll feel dumb, because I’d rather feel that than the disbelief and outrage I feel right now.

Read more:

• Digital Literacy Skills Essential to Closing Broadband Gap
• International Briefing on the U.S. National Broadband Plan
• FCC Proposes Digital Literacy Corps
• 21st Century Workers Require New Skills

Similar Posts:

• National Broadband Plan & Digital Literacy Corps
• The Digital Divide Does Not Discriminate
• Post at Broadband for America: Libraries Are Essential for Bridging the Gap

Or 30 Things in 20 minutes.  Maurice Coleman and I presented with another group so we only had 20 minutes to run through ours.  I’d say we did pretty well though.

We put together a resources pages with links to all of the tools we mentioned and some the audience threw out at the end.

Cloud Computing Resources

• Cloud Computing Explained
• NIST Computer Security Division

Scheduling

• 30 boxes
• doodle (schedule Polling)

Curriculum development

• PBWorks
• Wikispaces
• Wikipedia wiki farm comparison
• delicious
• Diigo
• MindMeister
• Freemind

Resource Sharing

• Netvibes
• Pageflakes
• Feed My Inbox
• WordPress
• Blogger
• Zotero

File Sharing

• dropbox (Get a dropbox and Maurice gets more space <g>)
• drop.io
• box net.

In class communication

• twitter
• Friend Feed

Classroom space

• Asynchronus
  • Jing
  • Ning is soon not to have free networks according to
    TechCrunch (April 15th, 2010)
  • blogs
  • wikis

• Synchronus
  • skype
  • tinychat
  • dim dim
  • YuuGuu

Evaluation

• Instant Feedback
  • pollyeverywhere.com

• Traditional Feedback surveymonkey
  • polldaddy.com
  • zoomerang
  • survey monkey

Archiving

• Slideshare
• wink
• ScreenToaster
• Camstudio
• Audacity
• UStream
• Blip.tv
• Vimeo
• Elluminate

Web Application Suites

• Zoho Apps
• Google Docs

Similar Posts:

• Libraries and Transliteracy at Computers in Libraries #cil2010
• Digital Branch Managers Sound Off #CiL2010
• Information Fluency Keynote #cil2010

CC image used courtesy of holeymoon on flickr

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 1/29/2010 thru 2/4/2010

1. about dismantling the echo-chamber… more on the echo chamber
2. Content Creators & Consumers (& the iPad) – an interesting post on who the audience of the iPad is. I know its not me, but I’ve had conversations with enough people who are just waiting to get one that I know there is an audience no matter what the techies feel its lacking.
3. Facebook Is Working On A Foursquare-Killer
4. Why Smart People Don’t Learn from Failures – its ok to fail, just be sure you learn something from it.
5. President’s budget freezes library funding, omits school libraries from education increase if you haven’t heard or read about this you need to and read Buffy Hamilton’s response An Indecent Proposal
6. Don’t feed the trolls, unless you’re feeding them tranquilizers – great article on how to handle blog comments, including how to handle trolls
7. 10 Steps to Promote Learning in Your Conference Presentation
8. Information and services should be equal
9. But, I Like My Loser Friends! great post from Mary Schmidt at Lip-Sticking in response to The Most Important Success Tip:Stop Lying Down with Dogs, Already from Copyblogger
10. ALA Learning -5 Tips for Trainers to Prevent TechFail

Similar Posts:

• Top Ten Links – Week 3
• Top Ten Links Week 4
• Top Ten Links Week 6

The fabulous Gretchen Caserotti and staff in the Childrens Department at the Darien Libray are kicking off a learning 2.0 class for parents. From the website:

You are raising kids in a digital world. Facebook, Twitter and a growing number of websites and social tools are becoming increasingly important in most aspects of our 21^st Century world. Information Literacy is crucial to your children’s success in school and technology is now completely integrated into your child’s life. Today’s students want web 2.0 tools to be a part of their learning lives because these are the tools that enable them to connect, collaborate, create and engage in learning that is relevant, contextual and experiential.

Why should they have all the fun? Join us through 12 weeks of learning through engagement in online technology in 21 simple activities that you can do on your own time, at your own pace. This program is designed to help you learn about, and how to use, web 2.0 technologies so that you may better support, guide and parent your digital native kids safely and confidently through both the perils and the possibilities that this brave new digital world offers.

Kids don’t just learn in school. You are your children’s first and forever teachers.

So, join in the fun – come play and learn with us!

The official kick-off party is February 2nd and the program runs 12 weeks. I can’t wait to see the lessons and hear how it turns out!Similar Posts:

• 23 Things Online Summit
• What programming should a library science student learn?
• Remeber, training is not learning.

cc image used courtesy of Leo Reynolds on flickr

If you follow me on Twitter you know I share and retweet a lot of links.  I don’t know how you treat Twitter but if I’m not paying attention when something is shared I miss it. So I’ve been thinking I need a way to share those links ones on the blog.  I thought I’d try to blog a best of the best of Twitter blog post each Friday.

I really don’t want to do an automatic recap of my Twitter posts each week and force you to wade through all of my conversations, so I’ll be hand selecting the 10 best links each week.  I hope this is useful. Please feel free to let me know of any links you think deserve to be in the list!

1. New Year’s Resolutions – four New Years resolutions all librarians should be making. yes, really, even you.
2. Trends and Technology Timeline 2010+
3. Because it’s that good: 10 Exciting Ways To Waste Your Training Dollars
4. Jenica’s IOLUG speaker’s notes on online identity – you’re online you should be thinking about your identity, Jenica offers some great tips and information.
5. XO-3 concept design is here! this looks so awesome how could you not want one?
6. 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock – even though I weeded mine during my break I still rely on it heavily, I just can’t be on Twitter every moment of every day.
7. 10 Librarian Blogs To Read in 2010 – because we all need more blogs in our FeedReader
8. The Future of Reading: Don’t worry. It might be better than you think. – great article a must read. My favorite quote “Always deny the apocalypse, John. You’ll usually be right, and when you’re wrong, no one will be left to say, ‘I told you so.’”
9. 8 Things Every Geek Needs to Do Before 2010 – I know it’s already 2010 but if you haven’t done these things you need to!
10. Quotable Facts About America’s Libraries - the new Quotable Facts from ALA is out. Did you know Americans spend more than twice as much on candy as they do on public libraries?

QMBJXWWWB9EPSimilar Posts:

• How Useful Are the Top Ten Link Posts?
• Top Ten Links – Week 2
• Top Ten Links Week 4

One of my presentations from Notes from the 2009 Internet Librarian Conference with Erin Downey Howerton

Similar Posts:

• Intergrating Libraries & Communities
• Market yourself market your library – Lori Reed
• Micro Interactions, Conversations, & Customers: Sweet Tweet Strategies

I took my slideshow on transliteracy and turned it into a video.  I was curious about how easy it was to turn a slideshow into a video (its super easy!) so I thought I’d try it.  Most of my presentations aren’t meant to stand alone and so don’t really translate well to video. When I was putting the transliteracy one together I wanted it to be able to stand alone, so I thought I’d give it a try. A little self indulgent I know But anyway here it is.

Learn more about transliteracySimilar Posts:

• Libraries and Transliteracy Slideshow
• Transliteracy is 3D
• KLA Libraries and Transliteracy Presentation

The Knight Foundation has released a new report Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. A good deal of the content either is or could be applies to libraries.  The entire report is 148  pages, you can also download a 2 page summary that includes recommendations like these

• 2: Increase support for public service media aimed at meeting community information needs.  Read more …
• 6: Integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements of education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.  Read more …
• 7: Fund and support public libraries and other community institutions as centers of digital and media training, especially for adults.  Read more …
• 10: Support the activities of information providers to reach local audiences with quality content through all appropriate media, such as mobile phones, radio, and public-access cable.  Read more …
• 12: Engage young people in developing the digital information and communication capacities of local communities.  Read more …
• 14: Emphasize community information flow in the design and enhancement of a local community’s public spaces..  Read more …
• 15: Ensure that every local community has at least one high-quality online hub.  Read more …

The Foundation has also taken actions that affect libraries:

$3.3 million to improve free, public Internet access in libraries in 12 communities

$2.28 million in broadband access projects in underserved neighborhoods in three cities

Similar Posts:

• Librarians Play a Vital Role in 21st Century Literacies
• Video from Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy
• KLA Libraries and Transliteracy Presentation

I have a new post over at ALA Learning about on demand training for staff, the benefits of it and how to make it happen.

Because these impromptu, or on demand, sessions are one on one, people often feel more comfortable asking questions they may not ask in front of a group. One on one sessions have other advantages too. You move at the pace of the individual, not the group or a schedule. You can walk them through the process step by step, more than once if needed. You can see if the person doesn’t understand right away and explain it again or in a different way.

I also find that providing on demand training can make staff more interested in attending your training classes, give you new ideas for training sessions and even get you invited to department meetings for training!

Similar Posts:

• T is for Training
• Eternal September: Be Ready to Repeat Yourself. Again.
• SCOM Videos

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about transliteracy and how important the concept is for libraries and librarians. I’ve created a slideshow I hope conveys the message and is easy to share.

I have also added page with information on transliteracy.

Similar Posts:

• Libraries and Transliteracy Resource List
• Libraries and Transliteracy at Computers in Libraries #cil2010
• Transliteracy is 3D