Learning 2.0 is a program initially developed by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (PLCMC), NC, which aims to encourage library staff to familiarize themselves with the variety of free technologies that are out there, and to explore how they fit into the library context. The program follows “23 Things” or tasks each staff member needed to complete and to provide encouragement to participate, each staff member who completed the program was given a USB MP3 player. At the end, a laptop was raffled off among those who finished the 23 tasks. The 23 tasks included starting a blog, exploring Flickr and it’s multiple applications, setting up an RSS feed, and learning about tagging, wikis, and YouTube, among others.
Although the staff from the PLCMC has already finished the program, the site was kept live to allow others to implement the program in their own libraries under Creative Commons licensing. Actually, anyone wanting to learn more about freely available technologies could just as easily follow the instructions as well. As of today, it seems that mostly other public libraries have implemented this program to encourage staff members to learn new technologies; some of these libraries include the San Jose Public Library (CA), Loudoun County Public Library (VA), and even Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne Australia.
The original site can be found at this address; http://plcmcl2-about.blogspot.com/
The site for the completed project is at this address; http://plcmclearning.blogspot.com/
(This post was originally used for my Technology class.)