Sam Cook of the U of Hartford  Allen Library was in my Screencasting class on Wednesday. Today, he posted his first tutorial to the library website! Speedy! And he did a terrific job.

During the same class, Gretchen Durley of the Terryville (CT) PL told me about the project she’d launched after the Podcasting class she’d taken some months ago. She holds a monthly Discussion & Dessert book group for 3rd & 4th graders. As part of that they record their reactions and reviews of each month’s books. And what fun and thoughtful reviews these kids are doing.  Have a listen and see if you don’t agree.

A big thanks to Gretchen and Sam for sharing what they’ve created.

1) Your One Sentence Bio

My business card reads: librarian . techie . trainer . consultant – to which I’ll add amateur gardener, foodie, reader, photographer, traveler.

2) Do you blog? If yes, how did you come up with your blog name?

Yes, here at pafa.net, very uncreatively named for my uncreatively named business, PA Farrington Associates.

3) What is your professional background?

17 years in academic  libraries with stints in interlibrary loan, gov docs & maps, reference, technology & systems. 13 years as a consultant & trainer to libraries & schools.

4) What training do you do? staff? patrons? types of classes?

Library and school staff. And just occasionally for parents, grandparents and kids! Technology, online outreach & marketing, web site development, web 2.0, social media, etc. etc. etc.

5) What training do you think is most important to libraries right now

Anything that will help staff think outside of our boxes (really hate that phrase though!) and help them find their way during the exciting (and sometimes exhausting and scary) sea-change we are in the midst of.

6 ) Where do you get your training?

Conferences, webinars, reading, books (oh my, yes, books!), friends, classes.

7 ) How do you keep up?

Twitter, facebook, meetings, conferences, delicious links, webinars, google reader, magazines, colleagues.

8 ) What do you think are the biggest challenges libraries are facing right now?

Evolving and redefining what a library is and how we can continue to meet the changing needs of our customers, even when our customers aren’t always aware that their needs are changing.

9) What are biggest challenges for trainers?

Keeping up, keeping ahead, seeing what’s coming down the road and meeting the needs in #5 & #8.

10) What exciting things are you doing training wise?

Creating a bunch of new classes for this spring and summer – not sure what they’ll be yet, but they’ll focus on how to improve library websites and how to get library content and info out of the library and into the digital spaces where many of our customers ‘live’.

11) What do you wish were you doing?

At this very cold icy dark wintry moment? Warm sunshine, sandy beach, good book, good friends and dare I say, a margarita?

12) What would you do with a badger?

Write a wonderful children’s story about a badger and a mole and oh.. whoops, it’s been done.

13) What’s your favorite food?

Anything fresh and spicy and wonderfully tasty. I love meals of appetizers and snacks, get to taste lots of things that way.

14) If you were stranded on an island, what one thing would you want to have with you?

A boat so I could leave when I wanted to.

15) Do you know what happens when a grasshopper kicks all the seeds out of a pickle?

No, but I googled it.

16) Post it notes or the back of your hand?

Post it notes and the palm of my hand.

17) Windows or Mac?

I have an Mac soul, trapped in a PC body.

18) Talk about one training moment you’d like to forget?

I’ve forgotten…..  multiple days with a student who asked increasingly incomprehensible questions, tried to answer them himself and didn’t listen to anyone else. I feel I totally failed that student, but just couldn’t find a way to get through and still meet the needs of the other 11 students.

19) What’s your take on handshakes?

Firm and friendly, but don’t break my hand. Hugs are better.

20) Global warming: yes or no

Tonight specifically, no. Overall, YES.

21) How did you get into this line of work?

After 17 years in an academic library, I was ready for a change and looking for a new job, when a budget reducing buyout option was offered to all staff, I took it and never looked back. Instead of taking another job offer, I decided to take a few months off. During that time a colleague hired me to do some training and manage a grant.  And everything flowed from there.

22) What is the best part of your job?

Meeting so many incredibly smart, fun, interesting and passionate library staff and educators.

23) Why should someone else follow in your shoes?

Make your own path, but if you can find a way to work for yourself doing something you love (and make ends meet!), go for it.

24) Sushi or hamburger?

Veggie sushi please.

25) LSW or ALA?

Both!

26) What one person in the world do you want to have lunch with and why?

Pop. His roses and I miss him.

27) What cell phone do you have and why?

I recently joined the smart phone crowd, upgrading from an ancient little phone that, gasp, only made phone calls. I bought a droid the day they came out, it’s been a great time saver and a time sink at the same time.  A true confession for those who have actually read this far:  I had the phone for 6 weeks before someone called me and I didn’t know how to answer!  Hello, hello, hello….

Responses from some of the rest of the group:

• T is for Training Meme – Bobbi
• A T is for Training Challenge – Alison
• Maurice Coleman’s Getting to Know All About Me Post – Maurice
• I Like Sushi & Libraries – Betha
• “C is for Challenge” at “T is for Training” - Laura
• Me. Coffee. Morning. - Jill
• T is for Training Meme – Beth
• Pete Bromberg’s 23 things (minus 3): A getting to know ya post – Pete
• A Get to Know Me Meme from TIFT – Stephanie
• 27 Questions - Marianne
• The T is for Training Challenge – Nicole
  

Classes this week are:

• Dreamweaver (2 days)
• Online Outreach & Marketing
• WordPress as CMS – special session for the Friends of CT libraries – they’ll soon be moving their web site to WordPress
• Screencasting with Camtasia

Next week I’m hoping to get to the SUNYLA Library Software Users Group Conference.  But I’m really sorry to be missing the New York Library Association Annual Meeting – I haven’t missed this in many years.

To top off the month, I’ll be at Internet Librarian in Monterey, CA teaching a preconference workshop on using WordPress as a Content Mgmt System.  The conference program is chock full of great programs and speakers. And you can’t beat the location!

Hope to see YOU somewhere in my travels this month.

A new calendar page is devoted to listing upcoming training and professional development opportunities available across the State. … continuing education programs from a wide variety of providers, especially library systems throughout the State.  We will be incorporating free webinars and training programs on a wide variety of subjects.

Handy! Thanks Elizabeth.

• August 6 – Wikis and Blogs
• August 7 – Digital Storytellling
• August 27 – Google Greats
• For more info and registration

Oswego & OCM BOCES SLS

• August 12 & 13 – Tech Camp in Slow Motion
• For more info and registration

And look for another post soon with my fall schedule including classes in Connecticut, New York and at Internet Librarian in Monterey, CA in October.

And kudos to the conference organizers for having good wifi in all the meeting rooms this year. Granted there were some blips here and there, but mostly it was terrific and I really appreciated this.

And I have to share something that was said to me that really made me chuckle AND think. “but I thought you were about 27″. This was the first time this wonderful person had met me in real life and for whatever reasons, I must seem younger than my 53 years in my online presence, not that I’m trying to disguise myself in any way. But I liked what this reinforced about age really just being a state of mind. I’ve heard comments from colleagues about young people being tech savvy and older folks, well, not so much. I’ve also heard people grumble that our profession will only change as these old folks retire. I realize that these things are often just said flippantly and aren’t really meant. And I’ve certainly been guilty of age stereotyping myself, usually assuming someone younger has far more tech skills than they do have.

So, I’m going to try really hard to banish all of those age-based assumptions from my thinking from now on. And having just overheard a woman on a plane say “I’m too old to be on twitter”, I hope we can all help our customers let go of assumptions that may hold them back from learning. If my 89 year old mother can be an internet maven, then what’s to stop anyone! And in light of that, I still feel like a spring chicken.

This is going to be a 2.0 “tech camp” training day. We’ll be covering social bookmarking with delicious.com. We’ll use iGoogle to create a personal web portal and as a place to pull together RSS feeds from blogs, news sources, databases, delicious and more. iGoogle is a fun and useful tool that students can use to gather research material.

During the afternoon we’ll look at flickr as a place to upload photos, as a source for creative commons licensed photos to jazz up presentations and some fun image generators. Then we’ll do a quick podcasting demo.

The day will wrap up with time for you to explore whatever new tools you’re curious about.  Please share your discoveries by writing a comment on this blog post.

• What tool did you pick?
• Was it easy to figure out?
• How might you use it with your students?

If everyone shares, we’ll all have some great new ideas! Sounds kind of like a chain letter – only way better.