If you haven’t had a chance to see it, well you just have to see it. Be prepared to LOL, spit diet coke or your beverage of choice at the screen, and maybe even pee in your pants. 
Michael Porter and David Lee King with the Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Library. Good luck getting the song out of your head afterwards!
If so join me for one of the following upcoming webinars.
Maintaining Public Computers: A Free Webinar
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re in luck: the MaintainIT Project is here to help!
At the MaintainIT Project, we interview hundreds of librarians about how they maintain, support, and sustain their public computers. We then publish all of their experiences, successes, and challenges in free guides called Cookbooks, so librarians can learn from the experiences of others who’ve done it before them.
The best part? Everything the MaintainIT Project does is free. We also produce free webinars, and we’d like to invite you to a free webinar on how you can use MaintainIT resources to make a difference in your library. Please come!
Lori Reed from Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (NC) will be facilitating this webinar for libraries in your state. Please spread the word!
To participate in this webinar, you will need to be at a computer and on the phone. Connection specifics will be included in an email sent to you after you register.
DATE: August 20th, 2008
AUDIENCE: Library staff in Alabama
TIME: 2:00 PM Eastern Time Zone
Click here to register
or
DATE: August 25th, 2008
AUDIENCE: Library staff in Georgia
TIME: 2:00 PM Eastern Time Zone
Click here to register
p.s. Out of state staff can register for these workshops provided there is space available or contact me and I will let you know when the MaintainIT Project will be hosting a webinar for your state.
The new WebJunction site is live. There are already some WJ fans out there who have created new profiles and been testing the site over the weekend. As I predicted it looks a lot like Facebook. (Does this mean WebJunction would be banned from children’s computers too?)
So check it out, and while you’re at it join the Library Learning Group on WebJunction.
The site looks great! You can tell a lot of people put a lot of hard work into this. Way to go WebJunction!
When I was about 8-years-old I was walking home from my bus stop after school and a car stopped beside me. A man opened the door and offered me candy. In my mind I knew better, but like a typical kid I wanted the candy and walked towards the car. As I approached the car the door opened, and the man reached his hand out to grab me.
Does this sound like an urban legend?
It might, but it did actually happen to me. Luckily my parents had taught me stranger-danger. That and I was also a pretty tough kid. I slammed the car door (I think I may have crushed his hand), and ran home. If things had gone differently I may not be here tonight typing this post. I get chills thinking about it–especially now that I am a mom.
I am living proof that stranger-danger is real, but you don’t need me to tell you that. The news inundates us with stories of stranger-danger even though statistics tell us that most offenses to children are committed by someone who is not a stranger but is in fact someone close to the child.
What I am really here to say is that it’s important to educate children so that they can make smart decisions in any circumstance.
Congress is considering a bill that would bar children who use computers in public libraries from accessing Facebook and other social networking websites without parental permission.
This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard recently.
First, how will we define “other social networking websites” when pretty much every site is becoming a social networking site? Has anyone in Congress heard of Web 2.0?
Second, how does this teach children to think for themselves and make smart choices? We cannot block every site where a predator could be lurking just as we cannot place children in a bubble when we send them out the door to school every day.
As librarians and library staff we have to advocate for educating our public officials, the media, parents, and children about the real dangers of the Internet – ignorance.
If you haven’t yet take a look at the ALA Libraries & the Internet Toolkit. Most of the content is dated 2003, but it is still relevant.
From my friend Brenda Hough at the MaintainIT Project.
You are invited to attend a train-the-trainer webinar Wednesday, August 6th, at 11 AM Pacific/2 PM Eastern Time Zone.
If you provide technology training for library staff, this webinar is designed for you! MaintainIT is aTechSoup project (funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda GatesFoundation). We gather stories and best practices related to public access computing in libraries and then create free resources based on that information. We have resources to help libraries with wireless networking, with technology planning, with computer maintenance, and more.
Every month, we host a free train-the-trainer webinar, to share ideas and resources for people who would like to use MaintainIT materials in the training they provide. If you’re interested in attending the webinar on August 6th (it’s free, interactive, only an hour long…), register here.
Content from LoriReed.com by Lori Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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