Report from the CSLA Centennial Conference

Selfie Taken at the Conference First Timers' Meeting

I had a jam-packed four days of learning, sharing, and networking at the California School Library Association (CSLA) Centennial Conference February 5 - 8 at the Hyatt Regency, San Francisco Airport. I came away with:

• Notes of many great new books to purchase for the Mira Costa library from Michael Cart's workshop on "Best of the Best Young Adult Books"
• New ideas of ways to help students become astute researchers and agents for change from author Paul Fleischman's "Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines" workshop
• Inspiration from opening Keynoter Michelle Luhtala to move more learning activities to where students love to be, on digital devices, and to make learning help available virtually on demand
• Inspiration from closing keynoter Shannon Miller to implement more activities that break down the library and school walls and help students connect with the world
• At least a year's worth of lesson and program ideas and tools to engage students from so many talented colleagues whose sessions I attended and with whom I networked
• Excited product purchase ideas from the many wonderful vendors who support school libraries and exhibited during the conference

I also did a lot of sharing at this conference. Here is information about my four presentations:

 

 AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning: I presented this session with Sue Heraper. Here is a link to our slide deck. Of all the sites we shared, I think our attendees especially liked the hands-on demos we did of how to use two of them, Kahoot and Socrative, to quiz or survey students during lessons.

 

Blogging, Digital Timelines, & More with Embedded Digital Citizenship: This was a short presentation I did to share the project for which I won a Good Ideas! Award. These awards are given for collaborative projects done by a teacher librarian and classroom teacher that can serve as a model for easy replication by our colleagues. The project I shared came from my collaborative work with Spanish Teacher Anita Rossell and her Spanish for Native Speakers Class. Here is the link to my slides for this talk. I will also be talking at more length about blogging at the CUE conference next month.

Going for Moonshot Thinking: The Latest from Google from Two Googly Teachers: Amy McMillan, a middle school English teacher working on her teacher librarian credential, and I met at the Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View last summer. We co-presented this session to share some of our takeaways from the Academy and to encourage more teacher librarians to apply to attend future academies. As with almost every session I present, we learned so much more as we prepared and compared notes on our different practices. Here is a link to our slides. We also recorded this session using Google Hangouts on Air:

 Make Twitter Your #1 Tool for Building a Personal Learning Network: Marie Slim and I prepared this session, an update of one we did last year. We are both passionate about the value of Twitter for learning and wanted to get more of our members on board using it at conferences and for learning and networking throughout the year. Unfortunately, Marie wasn't able to be at the conference, so I did the presentation on my own. Here is a link to the session presentation Prezi. I also recorded this session with Google Hangouts on Air:

 

 As Social Media/Website Chair for the conference, I did a lot of tweeting and encouraged tweeting by all our participants. In fact, I taught a four-week course on Twitter (which the presentation above was a short summary of) to help prepare more members to tweet during the conference. Although the course is now done, all the material is available to read and use on the course website. One great use of Twitter is to share highlights of conference sessions and events. Here is a Twitter summary of the conference, captured using Storify. You can see as you scroll through the tweets that, while we work very hard learning at conferences, we also have a lot of fun! This conference was CSLA's Centennial, so it also included a wonderful Gala celebration of this amazing milestone.

This posting is cross-posted on the Mira Costa High School Library bog,

CSLA Conference

Just one day to go before the California School Library Association Conference! There are so many wonderful activities going on there. I know I will be wanting to clone myself and attend just about every concurrent session. You won't, of course, want to miss the keynotes by Michelle Luhtala and Shannon McClintock Miller, the Gala with Delaine Eastin, the Legi Session with Bob Wise, or any of the other special events.Visit bit.ly/csla100 for all the details. 

Every year it seems that someone posts a "shameless self-promotion" of their session on CALIBK12, CSLA's listserv. Unless I missed something, I haven't seen any yet this year. So, I"m a bit late to the game, but in that spirit, I'm going to share the sessions I'm personally involved in. And, remember, "self-promotion" of what you do for school libraries is all part of advocacy, right? 

On Thursday at 4:15pm-5:15pm, Immediate Past President Janice Gilmore-See and I will be hosting a "First Timer's Meeting," where we will share tips to make the most of your first conference. We hope to get to meet many new attendees there. Another great thing about this session, is that you will get to meet other conference-goers. 

On Friday night at 9:15pm in the Bayside Room (right after the fabulous Centennial Gala), you don't want to miss our second annual "Unconference." This is an informal opportunity for YOU to determine the topics, share your expertise, and learn from your colleagues. Rumor has it that there will also be wine and chocolate to share. Some of last year's attendees thought the Unconference was a highlight of the conference! Check this link for all the details. And, ask me for an Unconference sticker or button when you see me. You can view the graphic now in the sidebar, and feel free to copy it, tweet it, and share in any other way.

On Saturday at 10:00am in the Poolside Pavilion, Sue Heraper and I will be sharing about "AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning." You'll come away with ideas of how to use some very cool sites in your library and with teachers and students to enhance learning.

On Saturday at 3:00pm in Grande Pavilion EFG1/2D, I'll be one of this year's three Good Ideas! winners sharing about my collaborative project with a classroom teacher. I will share about students blogging as part of their Spanish class curriculum and why blogging has been so valuable for them, and can be for your students. This collaborative concept could be replicated in virtually any discipline and at any age level. You'll also get to hear about Korrie Krohn's and Ellie Goldstein-Erickson's great collaborative projects. You will also hear about Good Ideas! from session host Renée Ousley-Swank, Chair of the Standards and Integration Committee. 

Then, on Sunday at 8:00am in Sandpebble E, Amy McMillan, one of my cohort members from the 2014 Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View, and I will be presenting "Going for Moonshot Thinking: The Latest from Google by Two Googly Teacher." You will get to hear some of our best take aways from our Google Teacher Academy experience, and learn more about why you should apply for a future academy. 

Finally, at 9:00am in Harbor B, Marie Slim and I will be sharing how to "Make Twitter Your Number One Tool for Building Your Personal Learning Network." We're both passionate about the value of Twitter for personal learning, networking, and more, and we want to convince you to get on board! 

I hope to see you at the conference and at some of these sessions. :-)