It's not easy being fun

It was Learning at Work Week Glasgow last week. And as ever with our LAW events, we were there. This time showing our eager Glaswegian colleagues our debut Discover Web 2.0 session in their shiny newish building at Atlantic Quay*.

You'd think a PowerPoint presentation supporting an hour long overview of social media tools would be quick to prepare. Write it off the top of our heads, really. But it's interesting how much time it took. I estimate at least 1 day of my time, plus that of a colleague.

Which is fine, actually. Because in that time, the original outline really evolved, not least informed by delivering the session. Looking at it today, it has more depth, is more relevant to our target audience, and broad enough to have something for everyone. And importantly, will provide a good foundation for the soon to be launched Web 2.0 Workshop. Some beefed up content with a liberal sprinking of hands-on trying out of tools, and that course will be good to go. Now, that will be fun!

* If you ever find yourself heading there by taxi, ask for Scottish Enterprise. Trust me. It'll be easier.

Back in the thick of it...

Back from my holidays for one week now. Felt I was in the thick of it by Monday afternoon :-)

So, still helping with our hour long Discover Web 2.0 session (as she is now named). Going to run through it for the first and only time tomorrow. Course is on Wednesday! 15 attendees of a possible 30 already booked.

I've added our Oct-Mar course programme to our online booking system, so I can at last link that through to our training module on our new look homepage, meaning I can at last publish that. Good feedback so far. So, pleased about that.

And good news our corporate communications team are getting all Web 2.0. Well, they're promoting some of the more mainstream social media tools, and they've been speaking to us about these. Thus enabling us to reference that in our Web 2.0 courses. I think this will improve the content, as it'll make it much more relevant to our staff.

Still loads to do though. Especially course-wise. Thankfully I'm only helping :-)

Oh, and I need to write a short summary of the usefulness (or not) of podcasting in the workplace. My instinct tells me this is untapped training tool, aswell as being an effective way to blog.

Off to bed now. Up earlyish tomorrow. Gawd!

Teaching Web 2.0 skills in the workplace

It's been Graft Central at my desk this week. Back from my hols for a week and (amongst other duties) I've...

Collated and considered feedback for our new look library homepage. Now written, waiting to be published. Now to sort out the rest of them. Stares blankly into the abyss.

Discussed tweaks to the new Internet Skills course. Which needs to be called something zestier than 'Internet Skills'. Mmmmm. Must work on that.

Also helping with the materials for a short interactive hour long Web 2.0 course, and a full 3 hour version of same. Yep. A 3 hour long webby course.

Staff want Web 2.0 tools. Glossing over the apparent demand for YouTube, it's clear there is a need for this. And more tools are being made available in our workplace to satisfy this expectation. So we really do need to show staff the most relevant. It will be interesting to see their expectations, assumptions and interest in these tools. Which ones will they want to use and why?

Anyway, all that left me so weak with effort that I'm on holiday. Again. This time there's no plan to do any work whatsoever.

Well...

Wot I did on my holidays...

Apart from lazing around, punctuated by moments of guilt that induces, I wrote the first draft of our Library Service's all new Advanced Internet Skills course. Yes. Be impressed. This will replace two previous courses we have been running on alternate months - Essential Internet Skills (EIS) and Advanced Internet Skills (AIS). EIS was pitched just a bit too low and undersubscribed as most folks opted to book on AIS. However, AIS course content was too broad.

The all new AIS will launch in October. I think (I hope) it will go down well with all concerned. More on this work in future postings.