Blogs are amazing. From Dr. Tony Karrer’s blog, I find a post to another blog, where I click a link to Dr. Jane Knight’s blog, where I discover a wonderful colleague in Australia, Debora Gallo. She works for ING. My family and I are ING customers, and I “love” the writing style used in their customer communications.
So, I surfed her blog with interest. She and I share similar experiences and goals both personally and professionally. Now, I know this is not a true video but a presentation. However, I liked it so much that Deb’s presentation on Slideshare.net is July’s “Video of the Month”.
Confession & Who’s Having Fun Now
When I was in high school, and even through my undergraduate college years, I wanted to be a university librarian. I was young and single, then. People discouraged me from that career choice. They told me the job didn’t pay well, and that librarians didn’t have much fun.
“Who wants to check out an encyclopedia?” they’d say, hinting that I wouldn’t get asked out on dates if I was a Librarian. I didn’t want to be perceived as a walking encyclopedia back then.
Well, from my current vantage point of a non-Web 2.0 and non-elearning 2.0, traditional corporate training department sitting behind a firewall fortress, with regulatory and network security folks constantly on watch….Bernadette and her fellow librarian avatars are having a ton more e-learning 2.0 fun than I am!
Hmmm…but, according to her presentation, the research indicates that all learning professionals will be involved in SL in the near future. I look forward to that day, as long as the learners actually learn. But, I’m not going to wait until I get the official mandate.
It’s Time for SL
It’s time I visit SL despite my full schedule. Why? Bernadette’s presentation has kicked me over the edge out of complacency because, as a Librarian, she’s having way more educational fun than I am in my somewhat traditional, corporate world. (I coulda been a Librarian; look at what I’m missing out on!)
And, like Bernadette, because I believe that SL will be a part of the general training world sooner than the regulators and network security folks might want. The needs of the business and of the learners will require it. As blended learning begins to replace first-generation e-learning, I believe SL will replace Webinars. So, good-bye WebEx, Citrix, Adobe Connect…hello Second Life (or a behind-the-firewall, purchased version)!
That means I need to prepare myself to gain the skills and tools I’ll need to be a virtual-world facilitator.
Besides, we’ll all have nice physiques like the Librarians’ avatars without going to the gym!
Note: I haven’t researched the Librarian career field lately. Just for fun, I went to Flickr.com to try and find a photo of a fuddy-duddy librarian. Ohmygosh how things have changed!
The lovely month of May 2008, initiates The Video of the Month for this blog.
The video below is by VendAsta and NoMoreDoorKnocking (view their blog) up in Canada. It reminds us all to create trustworthy social networking Profiles when we describe ourselves. And, to “trust but verify” when we add contacts to grow our professional networks.
Embedding a YouTube.com Video
How did I embed this video on my post? The screen shot below from the WP.org Codex FAQ page tells us all how:
