Introduction and IM practice

We are now one week away from the official start of Five Weeks to a Social Library! We hope that you will watch the introductory screencasts and do the introductory exercises before the start of the class. One great piece of the introductory content is a screencast created just for this class by Helene Blowers, Technology Director at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County. This past year, she developed a program called Learning 2.0 to introduce staff at her system to new technologies in a collaborative online environment. It's a very similar concept to what we are doing in this program. Helene found that staff got great benefits from blogging as well as reading and commenting on each other's blogs. It gave participants the opportunity to reflect on what they're learning, learn from each other and to share their thoughts in a friendly and collaborative atmosphere. We hope that you will find the blogging experience similarly valuable. The key, I think, is to really see this as a community. You're not just blogging about your own ideas -- you're sharing ideas, learning from what other people have written, and reflecting on what you've learned from them. In that way, it's much more of a conversation.

By the time the course starts, you should all have posted at least once to the blog, have created your profile on the wiki, and have an AOL Instant Messenger account and an IM client. If you encounter difficulties in any of this, please e-mail us and we'd be glad to help. We just want to make sure you're on the right track by next week so you can focus on the content and not on technology problems.

If you're nervous about IM or haven't tried it before, I know some of the organizers are going to be available this week to practice with. Our AIM screennames are on the wiki, so add us to your buddy list and IM us if you see we're online. I will be creating chat rooms this week during the times when my two chat groups usually meet. If anyone outside of my groups wants to join us for this week to get some practice, feel free to come visit! Here are the details:

Monday 3:00 pm ET. Let's meet in the course chatroom (you'll need to be logged into Drupal) http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/chatrooms/chat/1 (AOL Instant Messenger is having problems creating chat rooms right now so this is a good alternative)

Tuesday 8:15 pm ET. I'm going to create a group in AIM called fiveweeks (if AOL Instant Messenger is still having problems, we'll meet in the chatroom in the Drupal classroom).

In Meebo, to join a group chat you will click on the icon on the right-hand side of the page with a bunch of happy faces all around a circle. In software like GAIM and Trillian, there should be an option to "Join a Chat" or join a group chat or something like that.

We are so thrilled to be on this learning journey with you!