CSLA 2014 Conference Highlights

California School Library Association held its annual conference, "Journey to Expertise," at the Bahia Hotel in San Diego February 6 - 9. It was jam packed with an incredible number of informative, inspiring, and entertaining sessions and events. I was involved in planning in a variety of ways, including performing miscellaneous tasks, presenting two awards, and reviewing the last year as Immediate Past President; serving as the advanced registration chair; organizing a Friday night “Unconference” with my friend Marie Slim; and presenting a concurrent session about Twitter with Marie. 

Please see my Mira Costa HS Library blog for some highlights of speakers on Common Core and college readiness. This posting focuses on the Unconference, Marie's and my Twitter session, and author events.

Unconference

The Unconference was modeled after the one organized by Joyce Valenza and a team of other rock star teacher librarians at the AASL Conference in Hartford last October. With generous permission from Joyce for the plan and Gwyneth Jones for the graphics, I copied and adapted the AASL Unconference agenda and wiki, recruited Marie to be a co-organizer and a team of several other great TLs to help. Visit our wiki here. The point of the evening was to allow everyone to share their good ideas. So often, conference attendees think they don’t have enough to offer to submit a session, or they can’t get one together before the deadline. We all have worthwhile ideas to share; this event allowed for that sharing.

We started the evening off by dividing everyone into three different groups based on a quick poll of topic interests. (There were lots of ideas proposed, but we went with three, which seemed about the right number of groups for the number of people there.) Then, for about a half hour, one group discussed ebooks and how to deal with them, another group discussed how we teach student research and what students really do, and a third learned how to make craft books from Lisa Bishop.

For the next segment, we had a fast-paced Smackdown of ideas. We invited everyone to submit slides to a Google Presentation in advance, but attendees could also share on the spot and we captured their ideas in the slides for future viewing. Do have a look at the embedded slideshow on the unconference wiki or here. The one rule, to keep things moving at a fast pace, was that each presenter had a maximum of two minutes per idea.

And, for the final activity of the evening. We had people “vote on their feet” as to whether they thought an idea rocked or stunk. For example, one of the topics was “should we still teach citation format when there are citation generators?” Interestingly, the room was pretty evenly divided between the people in favor and opposed for almost all the questions. You can see our questions in the embedded slideshow on the wiki or here.

Marie not only recorded the entire Smackdown and part of the rest of the Unconference, she also created a Storify which embeds those videos, tweets, and photos from the evening. So, even if you missed this event, you can still experience a lot of it through this record. We didn't always have screen sharing on when we should have. I learned a lot watching the videos that I will apply next time.

Twitter: "Make Twitter Your #1 Tool for Building a PLN"

Marie Slim and I are both big fans of Twitter, and use it regularly as the key component of our personal learning network to connect with other teacher librarians, classroom teachers, authors, and more. We were excited to have a good turnout at our session, and, more important, got a number of people sold on starting a Twitter account or make more use of an existing account. Here is our presentation file:

Here is a Google+ Hangout video of the session. Since we didn't screen share (I'm a newbie at this recording business, and learning as I go), you will want to watch the Prezi presentation file as you watch this video:

As part of our goal to get more California library folks tweeting, after the session I created a California school librarians Twitter list. Please check it out, and @ me on Twitter if you are a Californian and I missed including you. I'll start following you and add you to the list. Let's make the list grow. As with all public Twitter lists, you can follow it and use it as an easy way of viewing tweets from all the California school librarians without having to follow all of them yourself or create a new list.

Authors, Authors

We had an awesome collection of author panels and events at the conference. Shelley Moore Thomas, our charming CYRM Banquet speaker, enthralled us as she shared with us the serendipity of mistakes and how libraries make magic real. Her parting words to us were "the paths of our lives are filled with mistakes. May you find the magic in yours."

Our closing session speakers were the incredible Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver, who together author the Hank Zipzer series. Hank, like Winkler, suffers from learning challenges, and the books help kids deal with such challenges. Here are a couple of my tweets during this session:

Winkler tells kids: Every single one of u is powerful. It’s your job to find out what u are good at and share it with the world. #cslacon14
— janelofton (@jane_librarian) February 9, 2014

Winkler: We need to teach our kids how they can learn, as opposed to what we think they should know #cslacon14 Librarians do that!
— janelofton (@jane_librarian) February 9, 2014

As librarians, we need to remember that mission every day!

The author panels also introduced me to some new-to-me authors and books I will want to purchase for my library. 

My Birthday

And, I celebrated my birthday during the conference. What a great place to do it! Here are the lovely flowers my husband sent:

And, a kind tweet and photo from Marie during breakfast that day:

My Blog "Facelift" for 2014

A new year, a new look, name, and URL ....

Yes, I know it is already mid-February, but I am granting myself through the end of this month to address "beginning of a new year" stuff. :-) And, this is "Ski Week" at my school, or, in my case "Catch up with Everything Week." so this is the time ...

I just checked back to see when I created my first blog. It was in 2007, prompted by CSLA's School Library Learning 2.0 tutorial. Soon after that, I began maintaining a personal blog and one for my school library. Then, in Fall of 2009, my school district moved me to the classroom, and I decided to start a new blog, "TLintheClassroom.blogspot.com," to tell about my new experiences being a librarian working in the classroom setting. Definitely the highlight of that "adventure" for me was helping more than 200 language arts and computer exploratory class students I taught that year to create their own blogs, an experience I highly recommend for all students. A year later in August 2010, I moved to my current position as teacher librarian at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach. I didn't want to abandon my blog, so I kept the same blog and url but renamed it "TL Back in the Library." Three and a half years later, I have been thinking it is time for a new blog url and title.

So, here's what's new:

• A new title: "Jane Lofton's School Library Journey"
• New URL: www.janelofton.com
• New banner and template (still a work in progress, isn't everything?)

Here's what's not new:

• The blog itself. I am still continuing tlintheclassroom.blogspot.com, but please update your links to my new redirect url, janelofton.com. 

And, FYI, you can also learn about my school library on my school blog at miracostahighlibrary.edublogs.org.

I hope you like the new banner and look, but please let me know if you have suggestions.

Thanks for visiting! And, Happy New Year! The first image above is from a photo I took of the London Fireworks from St. James Park, with thanks to Canva.com for the added text. The What's New is from quotes.prowritingaid.com.

My AASL Conference Experience

ALA 2013 Highlights

Summer vacation started with a bang for me last Thursday with my trip to Chicago and the American Library Association Annual Conference. I am definitely a conference junkie: I am addicted to the boost of new energy and ideas I gather at each conference I attend. Not only are there always lots of great sessions, but the networking with old and new friends alone makes attendance worthwhile. And, then, there’s always a lot of just plain fun. ALA 2013 was no exception. My only complaint was too much of everything – too many sessions to choose from, too many people in lines to get books signed, too much walking from one end of the convention center to the other, too big a great city with so little time to see it, and … too many highlights to share. Here are just a few of the highlights for me:

On Friday, I attended the "Breaking Out: Veronica Roth and Debut Authors from The Class of 2k13 Discuss Their Upcoming Books." Like many in the audience, I really went because of Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent series, one of the hottest current YA series. In fact, Veronica Roth was the moderator of a panel of 16 middle grade and YA authors who are having their first novel published this year, and I was in for a super session learning about all their books! These authors have formed the group The Class of 2k13: Books Without Boundaries to support each other and publicize their books.  They treated us to lightning speed summaries of each of their books, followed by a fun game of book trivia, and ended the session with great book and swag give aways! As a result of attending, I learned about 16 books I might not have discovered otherwise and made it a goal to get and read as many of them as I can. During the session, I had the pleasure of sitting with Geoffrey Girard and got the ARC of his Project Cain, due out this September.

On Friday night and Sunday morning, I attended the AASL Affiliate Assembly. Janice Gilmore-See and I are currently CSLA's representatives to this group, which is made up of reps from each of the participating state school library associations. Jessica Gillis, CSLA's VP of Communications, also attended with us as Region 7's Director Elect. As of the end of the conference, Jessica became Director for Region 7. Hooray, Jessica! While we conducted business during the assembly - mostly endorsing concerns we want AASL to address and commendations to other organizations supporting school library work - the best part of participating in this group is learning news from AASL and getting to establish new relationships and hear good ideas from other state organizations. I came away with lots of  new friends to network with and ideas I can share with CSLA.

On Saturday, AASL hosted its President's Program. The keynote speaker was Mark Edwards, Superintendent of the Mooresville (N.C.) Graded School District (MGSD), the 2013 American Association of School Administrators (AASA) National Superintendent of the Year, and recent host to President Obama during the announcement of the White House’s ConnectED initiative. He left everyone in the room wanting to clone him in our own districts as he spoke about how he has reshaped education in his schools. He shared how his district implemented a digital conversion to 1:1 laptops, keeping the teachers at the heart, and "preparing students for their futures, not our past." He emphasized the importance of an "all in!" approach, remembering that every single child counts, that community involvement is essential, as well as good planning, professional development, and reflection time for teachers. Students, who monitor their own progress, see the connection in their project-based work to their futures. He also emphasized the important role of librarians as leaders who must touch every teacher and administrator in this process. For another account of the session, check out "Loving kids, having fun, using digital resources," Judi Paradis's posting for the Massachusetts School Library Association blog. 

Plates from an early Encyclopedia Britannica edition

Another special highlight of the conference for me was my visit to Britannica's Headquarters. Britannica staff hosted a lovely reception on Sunday night and treated us to a tour of their facility. We learned that the Encyclopedia Britannica has been published continuously since 1768, and has been an American company since the early 20th century. With its long history, the contents of each edition have become primary sources reflecting thinking of the time. Since the company's decision in 2012 to become strictly digital, Britannica has made an arrangement with the Library of Congress to create and deposit a digital copy each year so that this tradition of providing a snapshot of the time can continue. 

Please see my posting on the AASL Blog for my account of the AASL Awards Luncheon and, if you are a teacher librarian, make plans to apply for one of AASL's awards next year. 

The last event of the conference for me was a concert with singer Janis Ian. Her beautiful voice and lovely songs made for a perfect conference wrap up for me. In between songs, she shared how she believes that artists keep hope and vision alive during difficult times. She asked us to remember, when we are worn down by fighting for funding and positions, that we are helping students in our libraries to become the artists of the future, just as she was nurtured by librarians when she was young. 

I know as soon as I post this that I will regret leaving out so many other conference highlights! But, I have reading to go do ... 

My "haul" of new books & ARCs from the conference

not to mention checking out all the 2013 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning and brand new this year, Best Apps for Teaching & Learning.

Caroline Kennedy Visit to Horace Mann School Library

This week I had the privilege of representing California School Library Association in a wonderful afternoon at Horace Mann School in Beverly Hills for a visit by Caroline Kennedy to the school library. The visit was hosted by Sheryl Weiss, a super teacher librarian, former colleague in Las Virgenes USD, and friend. Caroline Kennedy’s visit was part of her tour as Honorary Chair of National Library Week. She joined a fourth grade class visiting the library, and she, Sheryl, and the students talked about favorite books, reading, poetry, and what the library offers.

Ms. Kennedy, who has authored a number of books and just published her fourth poetry collection, Poems to Learn by Heart, related memories of sharing and memorizing poems when she was young. She encouraged the students to read and memorize poems as something that would stay with them throughout their lives. She talked about how poetry goes straight to the heart, and how poems remind her of her family and friends and how they shared poetry together. Now, when she hears a poem, it reminds her of the friends or family and the poem. I certainly related to her message; I have many fond memories of reading poems with my family as a child, and I can still recite them and enjoy remembering when I first learned them.

Sheryl Weiss and Caroline Kennedy share their experiences with books and poetry with Horace Mann 4th Grade class

Caroline Kennedy and Sheryl Weiss also talked to the class about favorite books, why they like to read, what they can do to encourage other people to read, and why the library is a different from the classroom. One student shared how in the library she reads whatever she likes, while in the class they have to stick to specific class subjects. Caroline Kennedy agreed that the library is a place where you can follow whatever you are interested in, reading for fun.

So sadly, Beverly Hills USD, Sheryl's school district, has her position, and that of Diane Sikkenga, the one other K-8 Teacher Librarian in BHUSD, on the cut list. Tuesday's event was just one demonstration of the crucial role Sheryl plays as a teacher librarian in helping her students learn to appreciate literature and become information literate. I am counting on the district to find a way to rescind these cuts and retain these valuable teacher librarians for the sake of their students.

CSLA 2012 Conference - Join Us!

As current CSLA President Elect, my biggest responsibility is overseeing our 2012 Annual Conference, slated for San Jose November 16-19. I actually first started working on it about a year ago,  when I sent out a survey to our members about their preferences for locations. It's now four months away, and we just passed a big milestone when we opening registration early this month. Please visit  our conference wiki to get all the information about the schedule and how to register and book your room at the Marriott.

Also, please check out this short movie to learn about some of the highlights. I just learned this week about Powtoon this week. It has a lot of cool, fun features that makes creating animation easy, and I wanted to try it out. One of my favorite features is the hand that can be used to sweep items on and off the screen. This embed is the YouTube version. Powtoon makes exporting to YouTube very easy.  I can definitely see using this new tool for virtual lessons or library information films on my library website and blog.

Google Search Education Portal

As a Teacher Librarian, many of my class lessons focus on offering pathfinders and pointing students to the best quality sources available for their research projects. At the top of most of my pathfinders are any subscription databases (mostly those accessible to us through our county library system) that might help with their topics, since I want them to know about the best quality sources available. I am very well aware, though, that even when I am able to offer links to great databases for a given assignment, most of the students will prefer "Googling" it. I think we do a diservice to our students when we simply point to good sources and don't also teach them the best ways to ferret the information out of these sources using good search strategies and how to effectively search and evaluate information on the open web.

I was delighted this week to learn about Google's new Search Education Hub, which offers lesson plans, slides, and videos to help students and educators alike learn effective search and evaluation techniques, including:

• Picking the right search terms
• Understanding search results
• Narrowing a search to get the best results
• Searching for evidence for research tasks
• Evaluating credibility of sources

For each of these topics, there is a beginner, intermediate, and advanced lesson option. So far, I have checked out the beginning search terms lesson, the advanced evaluating credibility lesson, and several in between. I learned some techniques I didn't know in each of them, so I know they will provide my students and classroom teachers alike with new information and skills. I definitely plan to go through each of these for my own review and new information, and to find ways to share them with students and teachers.

Here's a video introduction:

Thanks so much to Tasha Bergson-Michelson, Google Search Educator, for leading the team developing these and for sharing them with me. Those of you attending the CSLA (California School Library Association) Annual Conference in November will have the great opportunity to hear Tasha's keynote presentation on Saturday, November 17 on "Curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking: Why school libraries matter more than ever." You can also plan to arrive early on November 16 and participate in the pre-conference tour of Google along with a special Google workshop. Do put these dates on your calendar now!