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What's Hot and What's Not
5:08 PM EDT 7/7/04
At our library, whenever we offer a class with a title such as "Xtreme Searching" or "Search Secrets Revealed" we get an overwhelming response from the public... anything to do with advanced searching is a "Hot" topic for us...
Surprisingly, our registration for email classes is waaaay down... so right now I put it in the NOT hot category (steady registration, just not "hot")
What's HOT and NOT at your library in terms of training...
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
3:16 PM EDT 7/15/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
I am not currently working in a library, but when I was, I had a hard time getting many participants for classes for kids and the computer -- We had great turnout for genealogy, investing, Internet searching, but kids topics just didn't take off. Most of the attendees were seniors, so maybe that explains it? Or maybe I just didn't get creative enough with my marketing ;)
Brenda
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
2:31 PM EDT 7/30/04
as a reply to Brenda Hough.
I think one thing that would be HOT is a class on blogs. Maybe even just for YA - since they love that stuff, communicating via instant messenger etc. It would be yet one more way to allow their voice to be heard. Another HOT topic I think is to show patrons how to use a free RSS reader like Bloglines - show them how it may make their lives a little more manageable by having content come to them, rather then them going to the content...
Max
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
1:56 PM EDT 8/2/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
I just talked to the Silas Bronson library in CT (for a library of the month interview) and they mentioned that their most popular courses are their "Introduction to Computers" classes. I bet that the most popular courses will really vary by the needs/demographics of the community that the library serves.
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
3:12 PM EDT 8/4/04
as a reply to Brenda Hough.
One of our most popular classes, a few years back, was web page design for teens. We got the laptop lab from our state library and did some basic HTML. I think we had 12 - 15 years olds, for a 2 or 3 day class, and they did a lot of cooperating and sharing knowledge. It was pretty neat. I've thought with the Gates machines it would be nice to offer a Front Page class. With so many ISP's offering web site space (like Earthlink, and others, I'm sure) maybe adults would be interested in something like this?
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
10:07 AM EDT 8/9/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
I visited a library last week that was having success with classes on working with digital images. The course content included downloading pictures from the camera, doing basic retouching and saving files for e-mail, etc. The librarian and I talked about the fact that this type of class often isn't seen in public libraries but she has found that it is appealing to her patrons and is bringing non-traditional library users into the building and turning them in to library supporters.
-Kendra
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
11:25 AM EDT 8/17/04
as a reply to Kendra Morgan.
We are thinking of offering hands-on classes on working with digital images as well. Whenever we offer a lecture on digital photography it is very well attended -- in fact, I think our last session on this topic had over 90 people show up!
However, that being said, we still do have a high demand for Computer Basics and Intro to the Internet...
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
10:28 PM EDT 8/18/04
as a reply to Max Anderson.
That's a great idea. Blogs are being used in education because they promote communication and writing skills, not to mention research skills. I just found this bit about <a href="http://georgiasla.blogspot.com/2004/08/teaching-blogging-workshop.html" target="_blank">teaching a blogging workshop</a> offered by science librarian, Terry Vogel.
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
10:13 AM EDT 9/21/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
It was very interesting to read that email classes are not hot in your library. In our library the absolutely hottest class is the email class. What is also interesting is that the classes have evolved a bit to include some topics that we might not have touched upon a year ago. Attachments are always a question these days. It seems that lots of people are interested in sending and receiving photos via email. So these days about 25% of class time is spent discussing the ins and outs of attachments. Introduction to the Internet is our next most popular class. In this class we always get lots of questions about ISPs and browsers.
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
5:21 PM EDT 9/27/04
as a reply to Kenneth Bastura.
Hey kbastura! Welcome to the discussions on All Aboard. How did you find us?
I bet it depends on where you are in the life-cycle of your library's training program and class schedule. Once all (or most) of your community is familiar with email (assuming this is a big starting point) then maybe there becomes less of a demand there, but more of a demand for other things?
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
8:05 PM EDT 10/1/04
as a reply to Chrystie Hill.
I think Chrystie is right ... we have been doing training at our library for almost 8 years and so our program has evolved a lot. Also, I think our community is pretty technologically savvy overall... we still have a demand for basic and/or intro classes, but our patrons also want a whole lot more.
I am currently designing an outline for a course I plan to call "Sharing Photos the Easy Way". In this course I am going to walk people through the process of setting up an online photo album through a provider such as Picture Trail or Photo Bucket and then show people that instead of clogging up bandwidth sending pics via email, they can just upload their pics once, protect them with a password and share them with everyone.
I love my Picture Trail account and so does my Mom... she gets to see photos of her grandson every week when I upload them, it is secure and password protected, and it makes the distance between us seem less.
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
4:59 PM EST 1/25/05
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
Just thought I would update about what is HOT at PPL right now in training.
I have developed two new courses and just started offering them and they are a hit!
The first one is the Photo Sharing Online course. It fills almost instantly and creates a wait list within a week or two. Everyone leaves class with an account created and several pictures uploaded. I have students bring a CD or flash drive to class with 6-12 images on it for us to work with and it is a lot of fun.
The other class is School for Scanning and in it the students bring in photographs and documents and even slides and negatives and we fiddle around with the scanner and scanner software and everyone leaves class with several digital images burned on a CD! We limit this class to 5 participants to keep it hands on...
My motto was New Classes for the New Year and I am seeking new ideas for other new courses... share what is HOT or NEW at your library!
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
6:37 PM EST 2/2/05
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
Janie:
Both of the classes you described sound like something our patrons would also be interested in taking. Would you be open to sharing your handouts - instructor notes?
Bobbie
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
10:39 PM EST 2/7/05
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
I'm not sure how "hot" it will be, but our newest class is "Savvy Online Shopping." From all the requests I get, I think "Successful downloading" would be a hot one 
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
1:12 PM EST 2/9/05
as a reply to Carol Bean.
Savvy Online Shopping?! Now that's a course I could get into!
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
3:40 PM EST 2/10/05
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
Hey, I think you all have some great ideas. I'm taking notes and will share with my supervisor. Anything to get more people to use the library. We are a small rural library and people say they have nothing to do. Well here is plenty of ideas. Thanks
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
4:43 PM EST 2/10/05
as a reply to Peggy Riley.
mslastlib, thanks for your kudos. it's always great to hear that folks are listening... can i just say again that i LOVE the idea of using topics people are interested in to teach them about using technology and information. shopping is one, here's another... i recently talked with a friend about doing a pro-bono job where i teach an older relative of hers how to use online dating services, just to get them into the library, working a mouse, getting an email account. how's that for motivation? like you say, whatever we can do to get them into the library! i know i'm getting off topic here a bit...now we can go back to the library course ideas.
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
4:32 PM EST 2/14/05
as a reply to Chrystie Hill.
We have offered an Online Shopping class that was popular, too (we did it in the fall in preparation of the holidays!). Travel Planning is also popular. One of my favorites to teach is Computer Basics - we open an old CPU just to show what is in that mysterious box, then move on to powering up the computer, mouse and Windows basics (having more than one window open, maximizing/minimizing, resizing, etc) and play with Paint just to perfect mouse skills.
I love the photo sharing idea - when we upgrade our computers so USB devices are an option I will certainly want to do that one!
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
5:07 PM EST 2/19/05
as a reply to Bobbie Chapman.
Re:
Janie:
Both of the classes you described sound like something our patrons would also be interested in taking. Would you be open to sharing your handouts - instructor notes?
Hi Bobbie,
Yes I would be more than willing to share -- once I have them finalized. I have taught these courses twice now and they have met with excellent response as well as some good feedback. I am going to teach the class once more and see if I am happy and then I will gladly share.
The scanner class is fairly specific to the scanners in our library, but the photo sharing class is so much fun and would be of interest to anyone.
We had a patron take the photosharing class who had a CD of 50 photos that someone had given her from a family reunion that occured 3 years ago. She didn't know HTML or how to make a web page, but had wanted to share these photos ever since she had gotten the CD. She was so thrilled with her new Picturetrail account and the fact that she could now share these photos with relatives far and wide. Her excitement of being able to share these photos was the highlight of my month!
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Re: What's Hot and What's Not
12:19 PM EST 3/3/05
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
We have been offering our classes for sometime. The Computer Comfort (for new users) class is always full as is the Internet Searching class. For Spring classes almost every class is full. Microsoft WORD, EXCEL (esp.), Powerpoint and ACCESS have been "sellouts. When I ask attendees abt their interest, a lot are saying that they need these skills for ANY job they go for. And we have a lot of people job seeking (another online class we offer) due to the weakly recovering Colorado economy.
Pamm
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