Monday, February 13, 2017

#CSLA17 Conference


I've been back a week from the California School Library Association annual conference, and it seems that it has taken me that long just to catch my breath! I'm going to go off topic from this week's #EdublogsClub prompt again this week to share some of my conference experience.


Tiffany Whitehead's Keynote


 It was an amazing conference, filled with inspiration. We were honored with an opening keynote and several additional sessions by the vibrant young "Mighty Little Librarian," Tiffany Whitehead. She generously shared the slides for all her sessions here.  Her keynote address on "Visible, Vibrant Libraries" was a powerful call to action to be connected librarians, leaders in our schools, make the library the students' space, support our teachers and administrators, and constantly promote what we have to offer.

My Honorary Membership

I was also incredibly honored to be installed as a new Honorary, Life Member along with Deborah Stanley and Sandy Patton. This is a recognition the association can bestow on members who have retired and who have made a significant contribution to our association and profession over a sustained period of time. Please know that all I did for CSLA and for California school libraries has been a group effort, supported by my wonderful personal learning network. And, while I am now retired, I have no intension of stopping being an active volunteer for CSLA and AASL, and advocating for the need for effective, properly-staffed school libraries. Here are two touching speeches about me by Jeanne Nelson and Pam Oehlman (that made me cry!) and my speech:



The UnConference

One of the highlights of the conference for me in the last several years has been coordinating our "Unconference," which gives participants a chance to share ideas in an informal setting. First, we broke into groups to discuss hot topics. The topic of government websites and new challenges in assessing credibility was such a hot topic that we had two different groups for it. Next, we had a "Smackdown," in which individuals share good ideas and we capture them in a slideshow. And, just for fun, we ended the evening with a trivia contest. You can see notes from the breakout sessions and the Smackdown slides on the UnConference wiki. While our numbers shrunk a bit as we passed some of our attendees' bedtimes, here are our lively die hards at the end of the evening:


Conference Slides/Digital Handouts


CSLA makes those slides and digital handouts shared by presenters available to everyone for a limited time. Be sure to visit the conference page on the CSLA website to access them. You will find my slides for my two workshops (on images and on copyright) and my two concurrent sessions, both about Twitter there.

ESSA and Advocacy 

We had a number of sessions on advocacy. Be sure to respond to Glen Warren's request for volunteers and to check out the slides from the session on ESSA, how school libraries fit into it, and how we can advocate for ESSA funds.  We also shared our brand new "Beta" version of the new Standup4students.org advocacy campaign website:


You will be hearing more about this as we work to make this campaign and site grow.

The Conference on Twitter

I know I missed sharing all sorts of wonderful conference activities. You can get a hint of them from my "Storify" compilation of the conference on Twitter: