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AASL 2007: OFF TO A GREAT START November 1, 2007

Posted by tkaun in : AASL2007 , add a comment

It took me a few false starts before I was able to log into the blog so I’ll be playing a little catch up over the next couple days. I’m writing as an experienced LMT but a first-time AASL attendee. I arrived Wednesday to the Conference on the California Zephyr from Martinez. It was a very pleasant trip across California and I found I could actually enjoy the scenery as we headed up and across the Sierra Nevada–a lot harder to do when you’re driving. On the train were two colleagues from San Mateo, Kris Cannon, the retired LMT from Mills High School and Judy Moomaugh, the county library coordinator. We had a great time sharing recent experiences and ideas which made the trip go all the more quickly. After checking in and looking around a bit, Kris, Judy and I went to dinner in a very nice Italian restaurant in one of the conference hotels. The next morning I took a shuttle bus down to the Convention Center which was located about 3.5 miles from the downtown hotel district.

For me the Conference started with a First Timers Orientation at 12:30. As a pleasant surprise lunch was provided for the first 200 attendees. In the end close to 300 folks were in the audience. Heard a lot of good advice from from AASL movers and shakers, many of whose names were familiar. It was good to be able put a faces to a names I’ve seen many times on LM_NET.

That afternoon also provided the Exploratorium, an exhibit of “learning stations that exemplify best practices in school librarianship.” I saw quite a few interesting ideas and got to meet the folks who fun the TRAILS online assessment for info lit skills among others.

Later we heard the conference keynoter, Dan Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. His book was the book all conference attendees were supposed to have read. I have to confess that I ordered the book for my library but in the end actually watched a video presentation which Pink recorded last year just to get his basic ideas down. Even though I had watched his earlier presentation, I was impressed by his speech to us. Dan believes, and backs it up with evidence, that the world of work is changing and the best metaphor to explain the change is the right-brain/left-brain model. Because we are losing routine tasks to outsourcing and off-shoring (Asia), our ever-expanding need for novel consumer goods (Abundance), and the growth of automated processes (Automation) the skills and processes of the right-brain are becoming more important than the skills and processes mediated by the left-brain. Our educational institutions have traditionally emphasized left-brain (logical, analytical, sequential) skills to the neglect of right-brain (empathetic, integral, holistic) skills. Dan believes that since those skills tend to be ones which cannot be outsourced, provide the designs needed to continue producing novel and interesting goods and processes, and are not susceptible to automation, those are the skills which we should be developing in our students. He quoted approvingly an administrator from a school district in New Jersey who said: “We should be educating students for their future, and not our past.”

Finally (whew!), the exhibit hall opened Thursday evening. It’s the location where I spent a lot of time over the next several days talking to vendors and picking free goodies.

Thomas Kaun