Another training…

Today at work, I “attended” a training on how to do research on the state library of Ohio website.  I say “attended” because it took place online, while I sat in my cube with headphones on.  This was an experience because who in the office could know that I was “attending” a training?  So, a few people walked by and tried to talk to me and I was like, “uh, yeah, uh” as I tried to keep listening.  Overall the training was pretty good and helpful, but there were some interesting things going on as well.  First, the training was led by a kindly librarian-type older man (at least that’s what he sounded like), but all of the trainees were women.  I’m not sure what that means, I just thought it was interesting that the only people that signed up for this voluntary training were women.  As we were logging into the “conference room” there was some general confusion about sound and our trainer muttered something about the limitations of this online training.  I thought that was a weird thing to say because there are benefits of online training over face-to-face (convenience for one), just the same as the other way around, but it can be frustrating especially when you have lots of user error.  Another strange thing was that the only person with a microphone was the trainer.  The rest of us could listen to him, but had to type our questions into a chat room-like box.  It worked out fine, but I almost felt deaf or mute or something.  He could speak to me, but I had to hurry up and type a response.  It felt odd.  Later on, someone asked if the databases that we were learning about were safe from viruses and “misinformation,” and our trainer assured us that these were “completely safe” because they were commercial sites and they were not some “screwball’s website.”  I thought it was funny that he had so much faith in anything commercial as though company’s don’t have any ulterior motives or misinformation.  Throughout the training, he also kept telling stories to illustrate how to use each database.  These stories, for me, helped also to illustrate that not everyone knows that Google exists.  He told a story about how a guy came in to the state library because he wanted to know how to build a raspberry trellis.  So, he showed us how to search a database of gardening magazines.  In the meantime, I had opened up a new window in my browser and googled “how to build a raspberry trellis” and got 714,000 hits.  The first link also had a way to share “how to make a raspberry trellis” via facebook, delicious, twitter, etc.  It kinda blew my mind that anyone would go to the library to try to figure out something like that, but I guess Dan has taught me too well.  I am now a member of the digital generation and the library is still catching up.  Ah, computer training…