MLA Members: Learn More About Web 2.0 and Earn Eight Hours of Free CE Credit!
MLA's Social Networking Software Task Force, in partnership with the 2008 National Program Planning Committee (NPC) Geek Squad, is hosting a free CE course, "Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools," for MLA members wanting to explore and discover both established and emerging web 2.0 technologies. Course content will include background readings, discovery exercises, and a discussion blog. The program will run from March 10 to May 4, 2008, following MLA's web 2.0 webcast and leading up to MLA '08 in Chicago. For more information and to register, visit the MLANET members-only area. Registration deadline is March 9, 2008. Read more and register...
You'll need your MLA username and password to access the registration page above. (I unfortunately keep mine at work, so I couldn't read the expanded description again and tell you more.) It will discuss things like blogging (okay, I've probably got that down, but I'm always open to new ideas on how to use them professionally), RSS, wikis, social networking sites, tagging, and mashups. I'll probably have to do a lot of the work from home, since like most institutions, some sites are blocked by my workplace (MySpace is, I know, as well as YouTube. I'm not sure about others. Blogger isn't, but I'm not allowed to blog at work, although I can read blogs on Blog*Spot, so I can still keep up with some of what others are doing. I should be able to access Google Reader from home or work to remain up to date in my field's literature.)
Today I attended a webcast held at UK also on Web 2.0 which was a nice overview of what's out there. I learnt quite a lot, even though I am at least familiar with everything but mashups, which weren't discussed much other than to say they required more tech support and weren't as freely available as some of the other tools. One of the speakers was Michelle Kraft of the 'Krafty LIbrarian' blog.
I came out of that webcast with one burning queston--'What's with the kittens?' Trust me, if you'd seen it, you'd understand. Anyway, a lot of these teleconferences have kind of bored me in the past, but I found this one really enjoyable (except for random kittens). I got a lot of information that I found really useful. There were a few problems (the speakers were obviously nervous at the beginning, one speaker's slides were labelled differently in the handouts, which made it harder to follow, and some of the resources in the back were obviously printouts of hyperlinks but without the actual URLs), but they were relatively minor. All in all it was really good, and I'm looking forward to the 8-week class. Plus, at the national convention in May they're going to do a plenary session on Web 2.0 and for those of us who can't attend (I doubt I'll ever get to go to the annual meeting, unless I come into some mega personal money, because work won't help me out on that one), they're going to simulateously show it by video. Yay!
It's nice to get the opportunity to learn something in a class and not have to pay out the wazoo to get the credit. Thank you, MLA!
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