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.
  • Supercharged Storytimes prepares you to boost the early literacy skills of the children who attend your storytimes! This self-paced course is built on research about how young children learn, and covers foundational early literacy concepts including oral language, phonological awareness, print awareness/concepts, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and background knowledge. A free WebJunction account is required in order to take this course.
  • Child Development Learning Modules is a collection of 24 brief videos on topics in early childhood development including attachment, literacy and numeracy, emotions and temperament, racial awareness, and more. Each module is 20-25 minutes long and may be mixed and matched for a learning experience unique to your interests. A service of The Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.
  • Fostering Readers is 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. Fostering Readers was created by OregonASK and Washington County Cooperative Library Services and supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

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 Early Childhood Investigations, among others. Contact ORTR for referrals to other webinar providers.

Ohio Library Council                    State Library of Ohio