Getting Started!

Welcome to the CSS Tech Challenge sponsored by the Children's Service Section of NJLA! For those of you who didn't see our presentation at NJLA you might be wondering what this challenge is about and how the challenge works?   First, some background information. This is a self guided and learning based challenge.  It was designed to help NJ Children's Librarians and Library Assistants become more familiar with Web 2.0 tools and highlight some specific NJ resources. 

Each week, on Mondays, for the next four weeks we will post four challenges:  Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, & Level 4 (see the timeline in the right margin for challenge outline and dates).  Your challenge is to complete at least one level a week and blog about it.  You will notice that we give you an exercise for each challenge and some questions to help get you blogging.  You can complete one or as many of the challenge levels you want and you do not need to do the levels in order.  For example, you could just do level 2 or you could do level 1, 3, &4 and skip 2.  Whatever works best for you! 

We designed this challenge around busy schedules for those of you who might not have time to do all four levels a week.  We also designed this challenge around the different Web 2.0 levels of knowledge that you might have.  For example, some of you might find levels 1 and 2 of a week are easy and something you've been doing for awhile and you don't feel like blogging about it.  Therefore, you could just jump to levels 3 and level 4.  On the flip side, some of you might think a level is too hard or something you are not interested in, so you can decide to skip that level.  All we ask is that you complete at least one level a week in order to complete the challenge and be entered in the raffle (see raffle guidelines in right margin).  

What if you miss a week or get behind schedule?  No problem!  You don't need to do a week's challenge during that week.  Maybe you are going on vacation, you have a busy work week, or you just can't find time to do the challenge one week.  Don't worry! You can always play catch up and complete the challenges at your own pace as long as they are done by the end of the challenge, June 3rd. 

All communicating will be done through blogs.  We will post each weeks challenges on this blog and you will create a blog to record all your progress.  Week one is posted below.  As you scroll down you will see all four levels for the week as well as instructions for how to create a blog.  The only level we require you to do is Level 1- Creating a Blog.

At any point during the challenge you need help, have a question, need us to better explain something, etc. just send an email to csstechchallenge@gmail.com and we will get back to you.   Remember to have fun and scroll down to get started!!!