Week 13 Update

Welcome to week 13
Week 13 in a twelve week program?? Yes, here we are at the end of our Learning 2.0 program. We know that there are a number of people who have not yet completed all of the activities and a few libraries that are just getting started.

Prize draw and certificates
As promised, everyone who completes the program by 23 May will receive a certificate of completion and is in the draw for an mp3 player … did we mention we have 100 mp3 players to give away?

We will also be issuing certificates of completion for people who complete after 23 May but if you want a chance to win an mp3 player 5pm Friday is the deadline.

Presentation of mp3 players
The mp3 player winners will be announced and presented at:

• Public Libraries NSW – Country = Tamworth Conference Thursday 31 July 2008
• Public Libraries NSW – Metropolitan = Quarterly meeting Friday 15th August 2008 (Rouse Hill)
  

Any queries please contact nswpln@gmail.com

Week 11 update

Here we are at week 11 in our Learning 2.0 journey …. for many of you who started later we know you might be a few weeks behind. DON’T PANIC, you have until 23 May to complete the Discover and Explore activities to be eligible for the prize draw and a certificate of completion (remember Adventures are optional if you’re running short of time).

We now have 1,039 people who have commenced the course with 733 successfully registering their learning diary blogs. 46 people have already completed all activities.

We know some of you are finding the course challenging, some weeks more so than others, we hope you will persevere and please contact the Pit Crew if you need some extra help.

It’s not too late to join us on the Learning 2.0 journey. You can still join in.

We’re all in this together
We’d like to encourage everyone to take a look at a couple of other participant’s blogs this week, post a comment for practice and to encourage a colleague in their learning journey. Thankyou to everyone who’s been posting comments on our blog as well – we do read them and it’s great to hear from you.

Something useful / Web 2.0 in real life…
Do you like tracking global events – have a look at the Global Incident Map, it shows the latest 30 global incidents.

British Library has a new photostream on Flickr for their new Ramayana exhibition

They are asking visitors to share their Ramayana photographs online by joining the British Library's Ramayana Group on Flickr.


Sincerely,
The NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew
Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Kathleen A., Oriana, Victoria and Pat.
nswpln@gmail.com
pls@sl.nsw.gov.au
State Library of NSW

Week 9 Update

Welcome to week 9
Here we are at week 9 in our Learning 2.0 journey …. for many of you who started later we know you might be a few weeks behind. DON'T PANIC, you have until 23 May to complete the Discover and Explore activities to be eligible for the prize draw and a certificate of completion (remember Adventures are optional if you're running short of time).

We now have 1,011 people who have commenced the course with 717 successfully registering their learning diary blogs. Incredibly, we also have 23 people who have completed all activities. We know some of you are finding the course challenging, some weeks more so than others, we hope you will persevere and please contact the Pit Crew if you need some extra help.

State Library of NSW Learning 2.0
Following hot on the heels of the NSW public library network, this week saw the launch of the Learning 2.0 programme for State Library of NSW staff. In many ways the course is very similar to yours, but we've included more examples from museums and art galleries.

ALIA professional development (PD) scheme points
Did you know that if you are participating in the ALIA professional development (PD) scheme you can claim 16 points in the "Informal Learning" category for completing this Learning 2.0 course? As the minimum requirement for the scheme is 30 points per year, that will be half the required points for the 2007-2008 PD year.

Wild wiki ways
The NSW learning 2 wiki was set up especially for this course and as we approach Library and Information Week its great to look back at your contributions ~ it really highlights what a diverse, creative and customer focussed experience a career in public libraries offers (except for the bit about the brown snake!). We would like to see someone add an entry on working on a mobile library too - there must be some stories to tell. If you haven't quite got up to
the wiki yet (week 5) the invite key is available from nswpln@gmail.com .

Google docs and Zoho writer
We know quite a few of you have reached week 11 as we've been receiving some great Google docs and Zoho docs. One library reports that Google docs is blocked by their IT department but we will gladly accept Zoho docs as an alternative to complete the activity. We also heard that one of you received a helpful posting from the Zoho customer service team directly on their blog - who says no-one can hear you scream in cyberspace?

We are all in this together
We would like to encourage everyone to take a look at a couple of other participants blogs this week, post a comment for practice and to encourage a colleague in their learning journey. Thank you to everyone who has been posting comments on our course blog as well - we do read them and it is great to hear from you.

Sincerely,
The NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew
Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Kathleen A., Oriana, Victoria and Pat.
nswpln@gmail.com
pls@sl.nsw.gov.au
State Library of NSW

NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Week Six Update

As we write we now have 977 people enrolled in the program and 693 people who have completed week 2 and beyond. That is just over 42% of the NSW public library workforce. Its great to see so many people participating.

Flickr
If it is a few weeks since you have looked at Flickr, have a look at the public library photographs which have been uploaded from all over New South Wales for this course. Go to Flickr and search for nswpln2008. There are 244 images added during this course. Is there a photograph of your library included?

Google alerts
RSS feeds allow you to subscribe to updates to a specific blog or website.

What do you do when you know the subject your are after, but not the blog or website? You can do a search in Google blogs. After you have done your search on the subject your are interested in scroll to the bottom of the screen. You are given a series of options including Create an email alert for [your subject], Add a blog search gadget for [your subject] to your Google homepage, Subscribe to a blog search feed for [your subject] in Google Reader. Choose one of these options and you will be alerted when new information which matches this search is available.


Keep learning and having fun


Sincerely


The NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew

Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Kathleen A., Oriana and Victoria

nswpln@gmail.com

pls@sl.nsw.gov.au

State Library of NSW

Week 4 Update

NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 – Week Four Update

Amazing statistics
As we write we now have 959 people enrolled in the program and 668 people who have completed week 2 and beyond. That is 42% of the NSW public library workforce. It’s great to see so many people participating.

Blogs
We were fascinated to read that apparently “blogging improves your social life”

If you haven’t already taken a look at some of your colleagues blogs, we’d encourage you to take a quick tour of the blogrolls.

Blogs are listed by the name of the blog:

A-E F-J K-O P-U and V-Z (+ numbers and symbols)

Please check that your blog is listed on the blog roll and the link is really to your blog. We have struck the occasional gremlin in linking so many blogs so please contact nswpln@gmail.com if your blog isn’t displaying correctly – we need to know the web address … copy and paste it into your email.

Bloglines
Some people have found wresting with RSS a bit of a challenge. For some extra help: this video shows how to add feeds to bloglines


Hints for week five:

The wiki invite key is available from pls@gmail.com

The pb wiki logo is a sandwich … because it’s as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.

Keep learning and having fun,

Sincerely,
The NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew
Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Kathleen A., Oriana and Victoria
nswpln@gmail.com
pls@sl.nsw.gov.au
State Library of NSW

Week 3 update

What has been happening in week 3
The interest in Learning 2.0 from NSW public libraries continues. Currently we have 879 people enrolled in the program and having completed week 1 and 586 people completing week 2 or beyond in some cases.

It's still not too late to start
If you haven't managed to start Learning 2.0 yet is isn't too late. Although eligibility for prizes closed with enrolments this week the program will remain accessible from our website at http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/services/public_libraries/index.html
So jump on when you can.

A reminder
There are some fabulous blogs out there and it is fantastic to see so many ideas, issues, passions and points of view being discussed and shared. Just a reminder to make sure you also use your blog to comment on the weeks lesson so that we can see you are progressing through the program. We are also really interested in any feedback you might have on each lesson.

Flickr
A few people seem to be having problems uploading photos from Flickr onto their blog. If you are having problems you might want to take a look at www.flickr.com/help/photos/ for some help.

Keep on blogging.


Sincerely,
NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew
Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Victoria, Oriana and Kathleen A.
NSWpln@gmail.com
pls@sl.nsw.gov.au
State Library of NSW

Week Two update

If you have hints to share, send them our way at nswpln@gmail.com .

At almost the end of week two we have 697 people who completed the self-assessment survey. We have 269 blogs registered.

Blog rolls
Please check the blog rolls (you can follow these links to A - E, F - J, K - O, P - U, and V - Z). Let us know if we need to change how we have listed your blog. We have a few blogs with a name and no url. Please contact us on nswpln@gmail.com if you do not see your blog on the roll and you have registered it, tell us your blog name and url. We want to make sure they are all listed.

Our colleagues in Minnesota are also working through their own Learning 2.0 program called 23 things on a stick. The hint below appeared in their newsletter :
If you wish to change the name of your blog to something more distinctive, you can do so without creating a new blog or re-registering. Go to the Settings--Basic page. Put the new title in the Title Field and click Save. Or, go to Template, click Edit in the Header element, make your changes, and click Save. Once you have changed the name, send an email as above, but include the new title, the old title, and your URL, too, so we are not changing someone else's blog.

Commenting on other people's blogs
Have a look at other people's blogs, and post a comment on one or two of them.

A few people have made it so people can't comment on their blog. You may want to change to moderated comments so that you can decide if you want to post the comment or delete it. To moderate comments, log in to your blog, click on dashboard, click on settings, click on comments. Scroll down to "enable comment moderation" click yes, and provide an e-mail address. You will be e-mailed each time someone comments on your blog and can then decide whether to publish the comment or delete the comment.

Useful links to keep and bookmark:
NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Weeks five and six will be uploaded on Monday morning.

Keep learning and having fun,
Sincerely,
The NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew
Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Kathleen A., Oriana and Victoria
nswpln@gmail.com
pls@sl.nsw.gov.au
State Library of NSW

Week One Update

Welcome aboard!
This weekly newsletter will keep you up-to-date on NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 and offer hints on the activities. If you have hints to share, send them our way at nswpln@gmail.com .

It’s great to see that just four days into week one we already had 322 people who completed the self-assessment survey. We also had a few who have completed week two with 35 blogs already registered.

Blocked websites:
We know some of you have problems with websites that are blocked so where possible we’re including alternative links for the video clips eg. TeacherTube Versions which may not be blocked.

Useful links to keep and bookmark:
NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Our colleagues in Minnesota are also working through their own Learning 2.0 program called “23 things on a stick”. The hint below appeared in their newsletter …

Read the directions, people!
Seriously, it will make doing the Things a lot easier! There are dozens of first posts on the 23 Things On a Stick participants' blogs saying just that, "If only I had read the directions for Thing 1, setting up my blog would have taken me 5 minutes, not an hour." Or "I wouldn't have registered a blog about death in Danish, if I had followed the Blogger instructions. OK, that last one is made up, but there were a lot of weird blogs registered that were clearly not what the participant intended. Individual online learning is a great thing, but reading the directions is not optional!"

Of course, we’re sure everyone in NSW is reading the instructions - most of the time! Next week we will be building blogs using Blogger http://www.blogger.com/. The basic instructions are included in the lesson.

Hints for week two:

• Create a document or find a safe place to write down all of your passwords and URLs.
• Write down the URL of your blog when you create it and save it in your favourites as well.
• If you forget or lose your blog URL log in on the http://www.blogger.com/ website using your Gmail account details.

Once you have created your blog to get back to the Dashboard click on “New Post” at the top right hand side of your screen.

Weeks three and four will be uploaded on Monday morning.

Keep learning and having fun,

Sincerely,
The NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew
Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Kathleen A., Oriana and Victoria
nswpln@gmail.com
pls@sl.nsw.gov.au
State Library of NSW