five weeks to a social library
I’ve been silent, so silent, for the past few weeks, but I’m hoping that what I have to share with you to-day will make up for that silence!
You might remember Meredith Farkas’ post from some time ago on the topic of access to free, online, educational opportunities. Well, toward the end of that post, Meredith began forming an idea for a free online course, taught by people with expertise, using freely-available software and web-based tools. Well, like a lot of Meredith’s ideas, I loved it instantly, and I fired off an email that said: Meredith, count me in (and she did!). And, also like a lot of Meredith’s ideas, this one was not left wilting on the Pile of Good Blog Ideas Soon Forgotten, she actually pulled together a group of librarians and we’ve been working out the details on a course that will start next February. I am excited and delighted to be working with a bunch of brilliant librarians (Meredith Farkas, Dorothea Salo, Michelle Boule, Ellyssa Kroski, and Karen Coombs) to bring you “Five Weeks to a Social Library”!
While the Planning Committee will most certainly have a hand in content-creation, we wanted to open up participation to anyone else with expertise who would like to be a part of this exciting educational opportunity (we’re hoping to attract both familiar and new voices). Our CFP, below, should fill in all the details on the sort of content we’re looking for (topics, formats), but if you have any questions at all, feel free to contact us at sociallibrary@gmail.com.
Update: Wow, thanks for all your emails expressing interest in signing up for the course! Watch for the Participant Application, coming in October!
CFP: Five Weeks to a Social Library
Location: Online
Dates: February 12 – March 17, 2007
CFP Deadline: September 22, 2006We are pleased to present Five Weeks to a Social Library , the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. The course was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software. The course will take place in Drupal and on a MediaWiki installation, and will also involve a variety of other popular social software tools. The course will make use of synchronous components, with one or two weekly Webcasts and many IM chat sessions being made available to students each week. The course will culminate in each student developing a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in their library.
The course will take place between February 12 and March 17 and will be limited to forty participants. However, course content will be freely viewable to interested parties and all live Webcasts will be archived for later viewing.
We are currently welcoming proposals for live presentations and course content on the following topics:
- Blogs
- RSS
- Wikis
- Social Networking Software and SecondLife
- Flickr
- Social Bookmarking Software
- Selling Social Software @ Your Library (no live Webcasts on this topic)
We want the presentations to be as practical and useful to as wide a library-related audience as possible. Preference will be given to presentations that 1) are very “nuts-and-bolts” or 2) describe a successful use of the technology that could be replicated in different types of libraries.
We are looking for presentations in the following formats:
- Webcast – a one-hour live online Webcast that will be archived.
- Screencast/Vodcast – no more than 30 minutes (please note: most commercial screencasting software offer a 30-day free trial).
- Podcast – we welcome proposals for podcast presentations, podcast interviews with innovators in the field or podcast discussions between innovators in the field.
- Text presentations – we will accept a very limited number of text presentations, but we greatly prefer presentations that incorporate audio and video.
In addition to developing a presentation, presenters must also make themselves available via AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) for questions from students for one-hour during the week their presentation is shown.
All presentations will be made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Format of Proposal: 250 – 500 words, written. Proposals are a way for the review team to assess your contribution quickly. Please do not submit full presentations.
Proposals should include the following:
- Full name of presenter
- E-mail address of presenter
- Web-site and/or blog URL of presenter
- IM screenname(s)
- Institutional affiliation
- Brief biographical information (under 150 words)
- Include same personal information as above for any additional presenters after the lead presenter (if applicable)
- Presentation title
- Format(s) you are willing to present in (if you are flexible about the format you are willing to present in, please note that)
- Presentation Abstract (250 – 500 words)
Proposals must be submitted by September 22, 2006 via e-mail to sociallibrary@gmail.com. Any questions about the CFP process can be addressed to the Planning Committee at sociallibrary@gmail.com.
Proposal Review: Proposals will be reviewed by the planning committee.
Planning Committee:
- Michelle Boule
- Karen Coombs
- Amanda Etches-Johnson
- Meredith Farkas
- Ellyssa Kroski
- Dorothea Salo
Key Dates:
- Deadline for Proposals: Friday, September 22, 2006.
- Notification of Acceptance: October 1, 2006.
5 Comments