Lightning Learning @ Your Library

A down-side of conferences is that my brain gets super-activated, a state that is inconducive to sleep. So here's a 5:30AM brainstorm that combines an idea that someone threw out for a program during our Computers and Information Technology SIG meeting, "lightning talks" where everyone gets 5 minutes (and not a second more!) to describe something interesting at his or her library, with an idea we've been throwing around our department for months to give mini-workshops that last 15 minutes or less.

Lightning Learning at the Library. These would be 15 minute workshops offered in our offices or the learning lab in the library at 12:15, 12:45, 4:15, and 4:45, say. Possible topics: how to read your friends' blogs fast (Bloglines), Google Tips, Beyond Google, social bookmarking, Pimp Your MySpace (that was in Stephen Abram's talk).

Marketing possibilities:

• Flyers featuring a large lightning bolt with tear-offs that have the times and location posted on bulletin boards all over campus.


• A large lightning bolt cut out of red poster board displayed on an easel outside the room where the Lightning Learning will be held with times for the sessions.


• Another easel with a flip-chart near the front door that says "Lightning Learning at the Library begins in less than 24 hours." The next morning we flip to the next page that says "Lightning Learning at the Library begins in less than 4 hours." Keep flipping the pages to count down the hours, then the quarter hours, then the minutes. We can flip back a few pages to count-down to the next session. A student assistant could be put in charge of the count-down flip chart. Each page would have the same tear-offs flyer for the next Lightning Learning session that we put on the bulletin boards--we can just cut that off and tape a new one over it for the next topic.


• A long format ad in the student newspaper with the lightning bolt logo that includes a list of all the lightning learning sessions. When we start completing sessions, the ad can stay the same but with a strike-through line through the completed sessions.


• On our campus, this might work best the first, second, and third weeks of classes, especially in the semester beginning in January when there aren't so many orientation activities that make staff and students so busy.


• I'm thinking one topic a week offered on one day of that week--a Thursday one week, a Wednesday the next, a Tuesday the third. That should give lots of people lots of opportunities to participate.

Labels: instruction

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