The learning adventure continues ...

Lately it seems like a day doesn’t go by when I don’t field an inquiry from someone about duplicating of using Learning 2.0. What makes the whole L2 experience the best for me is when I see other people improving and expanding the program to fit their own organization needs. In the last two days, two such examples were recently unveiled and in looking over the list of discoveries that each program is encouraging participants to play with, it’s clear that they’ve made some adjustments and modifications that are for the better.

• Garfield County Libraries Social Networking Contest - Developed by Deputy Director Mindy Kittay for GCPL staff, this program is built using a wiki and encourages the exploration of 19 neat things including GCL’s own Firefox toolbar , Protopage, Pandora, Esnips, Fixster and more.
  
  Mindy emailed me this weekend and shared this… “Ever since reading about your Learning 2.0 Program last year I have been working on something similar for our library. It has taken me about 6 months, most of it on my own time, but I finally put the contest out to the staff last week and I am floored by the response and the quality of the work that they are turning in.”
  
  Way to go Mindy. It’s so neat to see a Deputy Director taking on this type of leadership at this level. If your experience mirrors anything like PLCMC’s, then you 6 month investment will be returned ten-fold.
  
  FYI-JFTR, It took me about 4.5 months to develop PLCMC’s program and most of it was on my own time as well. :)
  
  
• Learning 2.0 @ Mac (McMaster University, Ontario, Canada)
  Amanda Etches-Johnson and the Emerging Technology Team of McMaster University just kicked off their own spin on Learning 2.0 for University library staff. What’s neat about their programme (I’m using the Canadian spelling here) approach is that they have not only expanded the programme to twelve weeks and added some new topics (Gaming & Virtual worlds, browser tools, and social networks), but they have also added a “Learning Group” element to element people exchange ideas and explore together.
  
  At PLCMC this group concept wasn’t formalized as well as McMaster’s, but it definitely was an organic growth outcome.

Anyway, these programs are just two more excellent examples of ways that the Learning 2.0 approach can foster staff development. And for other libraries considering such opportunities of your own, I encourage you to take a look at both of these excellent examples.

PS: Here’s a link to some other programs as well.