Self-paced Online Courses and Recorded Webinars

These self-paced courses about early childhood and literacy are convenient, FREE, high-quality learning opportunities for librarians and other practitioners. Scroll down for webinar recordings!

  • Storytime 101: Storytime for Beginners is a 5-hour self-paced tutorial developed by the Idaho Commission for Libraries. This interactive course covers basic skills such as preparing for storytime, reading books out loud, using props and music, and engaging adults and children. It is free for anyone to take, but you must have (or create) a Niche Academy account before taking the course. Access Storytime 101 here: my.nicheacademy.com/idaho/course/22517
  • The Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington provides a series of 23 brief Learning Modules on topics in early childhood development, from attachment, to literacy and numeracy, to emotions and temperament, to racial awareness. Each module is 20-25 minutes long and may be mixed and matched for a learning experience unique to your interests. Browse the learning modules and many other early childhood development resources here: modules.ilabs.uw.edu.
  • The New York Public Library offers Raising the Bar: Integrating Early Childhood Development into Librarian Professional Development, as a free online early literacy training combining youth librarianship expertise with child development research and best practices in early childhood education. The training was co-created with the City University of New York's Early Childhood Professional Development Institute, funded by IMLS, and advised by a national group of experts including, Saroj Ghoting and Susan Neumann. Start learning and teaching today at nypl.teachable.com. Note: Raising the Bar is temporarily unavailable as of November 2022.
  • Washington County (OR) Cooperative Library Services and OregonASK provide the Fostering Readers resources, designed to help you plan and implement fun, research-based literacy programs for K-3rd grade students who are learning to read. Fostering Readers is more a set of program plans and a research review than a course, but the materials can help library staff increase their knowledge and understanding of the reading process and best practices in supporting children who are learning to read. Find the IMLS-funded Fostering Readers materials here: fosteringreaders.weebly.com.

These free webinar recordings on early literacy and library programming are helpful for library workers new to children's services, and those who are looking for new ideas in programming for young children:

 

The Library of Michigan webinars are brought to you by the Library of Michigan, supported in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Other free webinars are available from various providers including Infopeople, Get Ready to Read, and the Texas State Library, among others. Contact ORTR for referrals to other webinar providers.

Ohio Library Council                    State Library of Ohio