Nebraska Learns 2.0: Take a Poll & a Digital Disconnect

Nebraska Learns 2.0 is the Nebraska Library Commission’s ongoing online learning program. It is a self-discovery program which encourages participants to take control of their own learning and to utilize their lifelong learning skills through exploration and PLAY. Each month, we offer you an opportunity to learn a new Thing (or lesson). You have all month to complete that Thing and receive one CE credit. You may choose which Things to do based on personal interest and time availability. If the Thing of the month doesn’t interest you or if you are particularly busy that month, you can skip it. The Thing for October is: Take a Poll Sometimes setting up a full-blown grand survey using a service like Survey Monkey is overkill. Maybe you just want to ask your library’s users whether they prefer Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Maybe you’ve found the budget to stay open two extra hours a week and you want to know which day users would prefer. In these cases you just need to take a simple poll. In this month’s Thing we’re going to take a look at three such services: Straw Poll, PoLL Code, and Easy Polls. Another facet of Nebraska Learns 2.0 is BookThing. Each month we pick a single title that we feel has relevance to librarianship and/or information theory. Some of the titles will be very obviously related; while others may not seem so on the surface but there is a connection. Your assignment will be to read the book and create a blog post answering some questions about the title. The BookThing for October is: Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy by Robert W. McChesney If you are new to Nebraska Learns 2.0, your first assignment is to sign up to participate at: http://nlcblogs.nebraska.gov/nelearns/sign-up-2/  This program is open to ALL Nebraska librarians, library staff, library friends, library board members and school media specialists. We hope you’ll join your library colleagues in the fun as you learn about new and exciting technologies!