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Hey there, all you school librarians!! Don’t miss this chance to participate in the School Library Journal’s 2.0  learning program and explore the world of 2.0 tools and learning.

The program, All Together Now: A 2.0 Learning Experience, is free and starts Monday July 21.  This is a self-guided program, but you’ll have lots of company to share your ideas and experiences with.  And Michael Stephens of Tame the Web will be offering guidance and advice throughout the program via a blog.

The program wraps up in early September, just in time for you to put your new skills and ideas to work during the school year.

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7/21/08 - NOTE: To get started visit the program’s blog

Food for Thought is an innovative one day learning program for campus staff at RIT:

A full day of learning sessions on a variety of topics that range from application-specific workshops,
to explorations of technology trends, to how-to instruction,
as well as some uniquely fun diversions are being planned.

Participants can pick from 24 workshops scheduled throughout the day. The day also include lunchtime brown bag sessions, lightning talks and an ‘Extra Helpings’ one-on-one help service. What an impressive program.

Read all the details about how the event came about and how it was implemented in Janie Hermann’s interview with RIT’s Jon Jiras on the Library Garden blog. Another program idea to think about stealing! Thanks to Janie and Jon for sharing all this information.

An interesting article in the NYTimes tech section today detailing some of the many online social/game/play services for kids. Spore (mentioned towards the end of the article) is due out in September sounds like great fun and educational too.

Spore, from Maxis, a division of Electronic Arts, is more a game than an online service, although it does offer ways to interact with others online. The game, which will be of interest mostly to older children, is the brainchild of Will Wright, creator of the Sims, and is due in September. It can be played from a computer, Nintendo DS or phone.

In the game, you design life-forms that grow into tribes and populate a planet, which you can also design. Things get interesting when you connect to other players’ worlds to see if your creatures can get along with theirs. Finally, Lego Universe (www.legouniverse.com), coming next year, will offer a new way to play: in a world consisting entirely of virtual Legos.

Top Tools for Learning is an invaluable list of 100 learning tools compiled from the contributions of over 150 educators who each submitted their top 10 tools for learning. The top tools include del.icio.us, Firefox, Google Reader, Skype, Wordpress and Audacity. From the list, click on the names of the tools for useful comments from the contributors.

While you’re at this site, be sure to check out 25 Tools: A Free Toolset for Learning 2008, which includes a page of learning activities for each tool.

As if that wasn’t enough good stuff, there’s also the Directory of Learning Tools with information on more than 2,000 tools organized into 40+ categories.

All of these are from Jane Hart who blogs at: Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.