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Thanks for a Wonderful Year!

Dec 26th, 2011
by pollyalida.
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Thanks to everyone who made my work so much fun over the past year. Here’s a quick video with some photos from workshops, dinners, conferences and other fun events from the past year.  Watch out when you see my camera during 2012!

This is also my first post in the  #blog12daysxmas challenge that @polyxena challenged me to join. Happy to be joining my friends from Oz in this short “write a post a day for 12 days” challenge. That’s short enough that maybe I’ll finish it? I’m already a day behind, it started on Christmas day. And given that it’s already tomorrow in Australia, I guess I’m two days behind?

Since I’m working on a Cool Tools for Schools “23 things” project, I might try to write a quick post each day about a tool that I find handy or that sounds interesting.

Happy New Year!

 

Posted in: Life.
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Cool Tools for School

Nov 29th, 2011
by pollyalida.
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Cool Tools for School

Cool Tools for School

We kicked off another Learning 2.0 program today! This one is called Cool Tools for School and was the brainchild of  J’aime Pfeiffer (Capital Region BOCES) and her colleagues at other nearby BOCES School Library Systems:   Jen Henry (CVES BOCES), Deb Booth (HFM BOCES), Dee Portzer (Questar III), Paige Jaeger (WSWHE BOCES).

We all started talking about this last summer, but finally got around to setting it in motion just 2 weeks ago! Despite a quick start, we’re taking a slow approach with this program. Instead of a new lesson/thing being posted every week, we’ll offer a new topic every 3 weeks. This should give everybody time to digest the topic and have time to do more exploring. We’ll see! It will be a fun experiment.

We have just shy of 100 people signed up. And at the end of day 1, 7 people had already completed the first lesson. We’re off to a fast start for our leisurely program!

 

Posted in: Learning, School Libraries.
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Beyond PowerPoint – NYLA Preconference

Nov 10th, 2011
by pollyalida.
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beyond powerpointThanks to the all the terrific folks who participated in the pre-conference workshop on presentation and data visualization at the NYLA Annual Conference in Saratoga Springs NY. Here are the slides I promised to posts. I’ll also post a list of resources that we discussed on my Courses & Resources pages. (more…)

Posted in: Conferences, Workshops.
Tagged: · · ·

Using WordPress to Build Library Websites – ALA eCourse

Nov 9th, 2011
by pollyalida.
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It’s been such a busy couple of weeks that I didn’t have time to post about the WordPress ecourse that Amanda Goodman and I will be offering through ALA. It starts in Jan 16, 2012 and runs for 6 weeks. Amanda and I met face-to-face for the first time at the Internet Librarian conference in October. In addition to enjoying some great food and wine, we did do a good bit of work on the course!  The course will get you up-to-speed with WordPress and all the features that can help you build a dynamic and engaging web site for your library.

Note that there’s an early bird discount if you register by December 1.

Using WordPress to build library websites

I think everyone knows that I love working with WordPress and have been teaching WordPress classes for since 2006. Kyle Jones and I wrote an ALA Library Technology Report on WordPress that was published in April 2011. An expanded & updated version of that will be published by ALA Editions in early 2012.

I’m really looking forward to working with Amanda on this project. And looking forward to helping you decide if WordPress is the right tool for your library, school or personal web site. See you online in January!

Posted in: WordPress, Workshops.
Tagged: · · ·

Making Learning Stick

Oct 21st, 2011
by pollyalida.
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I’m just catching up after spending most of the week at the Internet Librarian conference. And what a terrific conference it was!

I was happy to participate in the Learning, Literacy & Training track on Monday, co-presenting with Bobbi Newman and Emily Clasper.  And best of all our “Training is not Learning” session was the first one of the first day, so I was done early and could focus on all the other great sessions for the remaining time.

My talk included a dozen tips to help encourage the participants in your classes to become more interested, engaged and independent lifelong learners.

Making Learning Stick

Posted in: Conferences, Learning, Training.
Tagged: · ·

Beyond the Bullet Point – NYLA Continuing Ed Workshop

Oct 13th, 2011
by pollyalida.
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nyla-conference-2011The early bird registration rate for NYLA ends tomorrow (Friday Oct 14) If you haven’t registered yet, don’t delay! And while you’re at it, why not register for the  Continuing Ed workshop I’m teaching. :)

CE-A Workshop: Beyond the Bullet Point

Wednesday Nov 2 – 10:00am – 1:00pm / ASLS / 3 Contact Hours

In this workshop, you will learn how to present information that does not rely only on bullet points and the usual presentation formats. You will learn ways to effectively engage your audience, discover low-cost and free resources for graphics to help you deliver your message, examine alternative presentation tools, learn basic principles of data visualization, gain an overview of tools to create powerful data visualizations, and select appropriate tools to make your next presentation more effective.  Speaker: Polly-Alida Farrington, PA Farrington Associates

I’m a little embarrassed by the title I picked, I didn’t realize at the time that there’s a well known presentation expert that uses that as his slogan/logo/catch-phrase. My apologies to him!

 

Posted in: Conferences, Presentations.

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