While researching my TRIPLL presentation, I found a great article in the May 2007 issue of Peer to Peer, the journal of ILTA entitled "The Webette: A Simple, Effective Training Delivery Approach."
The author, Randall Farrar, talks about the use web conferencing tools to offer quick, live, web based training sessions, on very specific topics.
While he suggests that webettes should be hour-long, I'd suggest that in most cases you'd want to keep them even shorter, perhaps 15 minutes or less.
If you don't want to pay for a desktop sharing tool, don't despair. Tom Mighell over at Inter-Alia found a free one that allows you to share your desktop with up to 15 participants called Microsoft SharedView. It requires a software download for both the host and participants, and you'll need a Windows Live ID. Apparently, it includes desktop sharing and chat, but no audio.
SharedView isn't the only free tool out there. Yakkle offers instant messaging, voice and desktop sharing. You start by initiating an instant messaging session. Once you've connected, you can opt to share your desktop.
I haven't tried either of these out yet...if anyone else has, let us know what you think.
I'm just back from TRIPLL where we spent some quality time talking about ways to deliver point of need training to attorneys and staff using such tools as webinars, remote desktop sharing, videos, etc., in addition to finding ways to make ourselves more visible and available by walking the floors and doing personal follow-up to training. It's obvious that formal, longer training sessions simply don't draw our intended audience, regardless of the quality and abundance of the food provided. Considering the fact that attorneys aren't coming into the library as often as they once did, we have to figure out how to take training to them.
So I'm very interested in this ILTA webinar called "Getting Attorneys into the Classroom - Why Would You Want Them There?" and I thought I'd let you know about it as well. There's a lot to be learned on this topic from the technology folks, since they experience the same problems we do, but on an even larger scale!
You'll have to pay a bit more to register if your firm isn't an ILTA member, but it's probably worth it. Maybe I'll "see" you there.
P.S. Attending and speaking at TRIPLL was a great experience. I learned a lot, enjoyed exchanging ideas with the group, and ate way more than I should have. If you're involved with training, and ever get the opportunity to go, take it! Thanks very much to the group at Lexis Nexis for continuing to offer such quality programs.
Do you want to get started with web conferencing, but just aren't sure how? What products are out there? What features do you need? I recently stumbled across a c|net tutorial that walks you through getting your conference up and running, picking the best software and leading a successful web conference.
Are you using blogs and/or wikis in your library? Answer this week's poll!
