e-learning and Web 2.0

I am coming the the end of my life-cycle as a library worker, and although I have spent a decade assisting and advising both staff and public in the effective use of computers, I never have really managed to get the adoption of modern tools fully accepted.

People still seem to want face-to-face training and support. It is friendly, yes, and familiar - but it isn't really cost-effective (or terribly green) to shunt a tutor around in a car, repeating the same material over and over again.

Far better to teach people to find things out for themselves, to train them to find what they need, and to apply themselves to improving their own skills.

The attitudes extend back to our educational system, especially for people who did not move on through to the rather more self-directed forms of higher education - although even people with degrees often still resist finding things out for themselves.

I can't believe how many times I get support calls which I can resolve by simply putting their reported Error Message into Google, or choosing a few keywords to describe what the person was attempting to do, etc.

They appear to think I know everything. And these people work in libraries - where the job can so often be about finding information.

Learning Pool

Anyway, Cardiff Council have already adopted Learning Pool as a channel for rolling out e-learning to all council workers. I did some training on the Moodle-based DLE (dynamic learning environment - sometimes called a VLE or virtual learning environment). I devised a couple of simple induction modules, but have also played around with it as a way of storing FAQs, Tips and Tricks, a staff newsletter, etc.

We have received little encouragement to get staff to use a forum as a virtual coffee room (for instance) which I think might help bring together staff who are scattered through 19 buildings across the city, but I suspect management still don't really believe how much work can get done at the watering hole, and assume it would degenerate into gossip. And they may prove right, too.

Still, it is all in place and ready to go, and Cardiff Central Library is now on Facebook, so perhaps it all eventually, however slowly, moves...

Learning Pool has also just set up a Facebook Page

Playing and Learning in a VLE

As an enthusiast, I often forget that many people haven't started playing with the internet yet.

They may shop there, or do their children's homework, or chat, or seek true love, but haven't really begun to explore how much more we (as a human tribe in a global village) could do with it. But then again, many people don't consider themselves creative.

And, yes, I realise how irritating acronyms can prove.

VLE = Virtual Learning Environment

I feel my experiments in setting up elearning options for staff don't seem to attract people yet. I blame myself, not the Moodle / Learning Pool environment. As Michel Thomas points out, the burden of 'teaching failure' should lie with the teacher, not the student...

[update 13 Oct 09] Just to add to the confusion, some people use 'DLE'= Dynamic Learning Environment. For instance, you can view a conference presentation on Learning Pool, called "LP’s DLE: A Social Media Solution for Collaborative Working Within and Across UK Local Government" here:
(although staff in Cardiff can't watch Vimeo video at the moment).

So, accidentally coming across Producer (a free add-on to Powerpoint) has motivated me to attempt something a bit more interesting - and use video, screen grabs, sounds, etc to make staff training more interesting. It'll take a while, of course...but it does look a lot like Movie Maker, so perhaps I can crack it...

Meanwhile, the search goes on for a good way to transform Powerpoint to MPEG for our plasma screens. (sigh)

MyFace and SpaceBook

We are slowly moving into the 21st Century - as Cardiff Council has begun implementing the use of Learning Pool (the public sector e-learning exchange) to roll out e-learning as an economic and efficient plan for increasing staff skills (never entirely replacing face-to-face learning, of course, more of a supplement).

We are even considering using Social Networking to promote library use, or raise the service's profile or whatever - so if anyone has experience of this, or relevant tips to adding an organisation, or forming an interest group, etc, please do add notes in the Comments section.

Learning Pool also has a forum where these kind of issues get discussed. e.g. Access Denied - where people mention the fact that Council workers often cannot access these very useful tools - for a variety of reasons (from security issues, to perhaps not trusting that staff won't 'waste time' using them).

They can 'waste time' networking and gossiping on the phone, or round the water cooler, instead. :-)

The Learning Pool blog has some interesting discussion of just this topic:

How Social Media makes your organisation better

The end of that discussion points to 50 Barriers to Open Government, a Wiki for discussion of Social Strategies - from Tim Davies at Practical Participation

Pontificating about e-learning

Gulp - I have only tentatively suggested my ongoing experiment in library staff training (using the Learning Pool technology that Cardiff are using for their ILM delivery) but I do find the Moodle environment interesting, and can see how it might be a benefit to us eventually.

Meanwhile, I was contacted by HR to offer a few words about the product's usefulness - which I assumed was just for Learning Pool's own publicity - but I just got a Google Alert to my name (vanity, vanity) to indicate that my quote had turned up on the Public Technology site!

I stand by the words, but don't know if I should have asked permission to 'speak on behalf of the libraries', which was not my intention, but is how it seems to have come out.