Conference registration deadlines loom September 22, 2009
Posted by Wendy Stephens in : Conferences , add a comment
- AASL divisional members have until October 6th to register at the advance rate of $290, a $50 savings over late or on-site registration.
- For attendees arriving in Charlotte on Wednesday or Thursday, almost all preconference workshops and symposia — including topics ranging from graphic novels to project-based learning to advocacy and law for school librarians — still have some availability.
- Tickets are still available to author events, which are fast becoming my own favorite part of conference, including Friday’s banquet with Laurie Halse Anderson and Sunday’s author breakfast with Linda Sue Park and Richard Peck.
- School librarians seeking course credit for AASL conference attendance have the opportunity to register through the University of Colorado – Denver ’s School of Education and Human Development. The number of credit hours available range from 0.5 to 2, with each credit hour representing a tuition cost of just $60 and 15 contact hours. Attendees must keep an attendance log and provide a personal reflection to meet course requirements.
Bundled Registration for ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference
- September is the only month for bundled registration for ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference. AASL divisional members pay $300 for registration for both conferences, representing a 20% savings over advance registration rates.
- Members who bundle will be able to make midwinter hotel reservations simultaneous with or after registration, giving them ‘first pick” at the ALA hotel conference hotel block.
- Special events ticketing will not be available until later, but can easily be added to your bundled registration.
Sign Up to Present at the AASL 2009 Bloggers’ Café September 20, 2009
Posted by bhamilton in : AASL2009 , add a commentAre you attending the 2009 AASL National Conference in Charlotte, NC? If so, please consider being part of the bloggers’ café!
What is a bloggers’ café?
Have something to share, but for whatever reason you are not scheduled for a concurrent session? Consider signing up to present your stuff at our Bloggers’ Café! Presentation equipment and Internet connection will be available.
Want to take a comfortable break from the conference hubbub? Stop by and listen as your colleagues share their ideas at the Bloggers’ Café.
Use the time to:
- Host a discussion
- Create a Birds of a Feather session
- Present your best ideas
- Expand on your Exploratorium poster
- Expand on your concurrent session
- Teach a skill
- Other?
Sign up now by visiting http://aaslbloggerscafe.wikispaces.com/.
Buffy Hamilton, School Library Media Specialist
Creekview High School
Canton, Georgia
Twitter Challenge – Win a Free Book! September 15, 2009
Posted by Melissa Jacobsen in : AASL2009 , add a commentFrom Ernie Cox’s blog, Mediacentered…
“Do you twitter? Are you a tweet? As the AASL National Conference approaches (Nov. 5-8 in Charlotte, NC) it is a perfect time to open a new twitter account or dust off the one you’ve been meaning to use. This year’s AASL conference will have a robust virtual presence including updates from Twitter.”
AASL’s hash tag for its national conference is #aasl2009. Twitter posts can be labeled using hash tags. Hash tags function like an index for Twitter posts. Tweet about AASL’s National Conference using the hash tag #aasl2009.
NYPL and VoiceThread Join Forces August 25, 2009
Posted by jhurd in : AASL2007, Check this out!, Technology , add a commentLast week, VoiceThread announced a joint venture with the New York Public Library, home to thousands of historical documents and photographs.
Users can access over 700,000 images, maps, posters and more as they create their VoiceThread, and it’s brilliantly easy to use.
In VoiceThread, Click on “create,” then upload. This opens up the “media sources” button, which allows you to choose photos from Flickr, Facebook, your previous VoiceThreads or….the NYPL.
Images are browsable by category, or you can keyword search. Click on the images you want, click “Import” and they will automatically load onto your VoiceThread. They are even already captioned, with links, for citation purposes. How cool is that?
Know Your Options August 17, 2009
Posted by jhurd in : AASL2007, Check this out!, Technology , 2commentsJust when you thought you knew all there was to know about Google Search! A few months ago, Google quietly introduced the “options” button, an interesting and powerful extension of their search tools repertoire.
First, watch this quick tutorial from Google:
There are three options that seem especially useful. Getting students to plan their searches, generate key words, etc. can be an uphill battle. When they can’t find information within the first few hits, they often give up, complaining “I can’t find anything!”
While other search engines also suggest related terms, Google provides one highly useful extra: you will often find a document results. For example, search “French Revolution,” click on the related searches link and “french revolution documents” pops up. With the emphasis on primary source materials in many history classes, this is a huge time-saver for students.
Similarly, the wonder wheel provides a graphical interface, a la Visuwords. for students more spatially oriented.
The Timeline can be used in two different ways. With the “French Revolution” search, for example, the user can drill down into specific dates. Clicking on the 1800’s section produced a page on the Battle of Marengo on June 14th, 1800.
It can also reveal trends. Run a search on “autism,” and you’ll see an explosion from 2000 on, along with an odd spike in the 1940’s. Upon further exploration, it turns out autism was identified in 1943, hence the high number of pages referencing that date.
Finally, the “Reviews” section in All Results. Students frequently have to find reviews of current topical books. If the NYT Book Review doesn’t have it, they’re often at a loss for where to look. A search for Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded turned up the NYT Book Review, Slate and wired.com, among others.
While we would all love it if students were more willing to use advanced search options and the various skills we teach them, the reality is they’re often not. Google Options provides easy to use tools that encourage students to dig deeper and broader when they search. It’s hard to argue with that!
Learning4Life Summit & Advocacy July 19, 2009
Posted by jfreeman in : Advocacy, Conferences, Standards , add a commentI was unable to attend ALA in Chicago this summer, but I was following along as best as I could virtually via Twitter, blogs, etc. One of the most interesting sessions via Twitter was the Learning4Life Summit discussing implementation and marketing of the standards, but the session also included marketing and advocacy ideas for libraries, librarians and programs, including time to craft elevator speeches focusing on one or two standards.
I have tried unsuccessfully to find blog entries or continuing conversations around the Summit or these ideas. If you attended the L4L Summit at ALA, please add comments below or links to blog entries. It was an interesting virtual conversation and it should continue outside of that room. Some sample tweets are included below, but for the entire Twitter conversation that took place during the session, search for #aasll4l:
You can’t be in two places at one time July 5, 2009
Posted by Wendy Stephens in : Conferences , 2commentsThis year was an unusual one for school librarians in that there wasn’t an overlap between the two largest national conferences. ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education, met in Washington, D.C. the last week of June, yet the American Library Association will not hold its annual meeting until just after the Fourth of July. This year’s ALA meeting falls unusually late. The timing of the June meetings is so reliable that ALA committee appointments end in that month.
But conference dates for next three ISTE meetings have been announced
, and they conflict with the ALA conferences for the next three summers.
Since there is a natural overlap between AASL members and those active in SIGMS, ISTE’s special-interest group devoted to library media, care must be taken so that continued overlaps between the two conferences won’t fracture the membership of the organizations.
The two groups have come up with some ingenious workarounds to unite shared memberships. Last year’s video hook-up from NECC in San Antonio to ALA in Anaheim modeled effective distance videoconferencing. Both groups plan monthly joint professional development activities attracting top tier speakers to ISTE Island in Second Life.
SIGMS introduced numerous virtual opportunities for participation at NECC, including a webinar simulcasting the membership meeting and recorded sessions available online. Some ALA committees are entirely virtual or offer virtual appointments, but much ALA participation requires attendance at annual conference and midwinter meeting.
Some librarians go to AASL, but not ALA; others attend midwinter committee meetings, but give the big annual conferences a pass. Another group, including vendors, flies between conferences, wasting a day in the air and airports.
While attending two national conferences can be expensive and draining, it should not be assumed that participation in ISTE and ALA are exclusive. At last year’s SIGMS membership meeting, media specialists were said to make up around twenty percent of the overall organizational members. School librarians are influential within ISTE as well. At this year’s SIGMS membership meeting, Doug Johnson called attention to fact that ISTE’s board now included Annette Smith, a Wisconsin faculty member and former school librarian, noting that participation in ISTE leadership gives librarians a voice when planning future meetings.
But when it comes to the networking and leadership opportunities only possible when face-to-face, the overlap effectively forces school librarians to decide between being at one conference or the other. This may result in a narrow self-selection not accurately representative of contemporary school librarianship in either place.
AASL at Midwinter January 22, 2009
Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA MW2009, Community , add a commentFor those of you attending, check out the Denver microsite, filled with ideas for restaurants and other “to do”s. The wiki has additional, meeting-related information.
Those of you not attending Midwinter in Denver can follow along from the warmth of your home. These blogs will provide live coverage of the conference:
- Official blogroll
- Twitter #ALAMW09
- Twitter feed for the Youth Media Awards
AASL National Conference speakers announced November 26, 2008
Posted by Melissa Jacobsen in : AASL News, AASL2009, Conferences , add a commentdanah boyd to address school library media specialists at AASL 2009 National Conference
danah boyd, the “high priestess” of networked social media, will keynote the AASL 14th National Conference & Exhibition, “Rev up learning @ your library,” November 5-8, 2009, in Charlotte, North Carolina. danah boyd is an internationally recognized authority on online social networking sites with unique and controversial perspectives on how America’s youth are engaging in sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. Read the full press release.
Marco Torres to wrap up AASL’s four-day national conference
Marco Torres will deliver the closing remarks for AASL’s National Conference, “Rev up learning @ your library.” A high school social studies teacher in San Fernando, California, Torres is focused on helping students become engaged in learning and acquire the skills they need to thrive in our 21st-century digital culture. Torres sees digital media as the tools of liberation for people who have lived in comparatively disadvantaged situations. Read the full press release.
Deadline approaching! Submit proposals for concurrent sessions at AASL National Conference
Don’t miss the deadline to submit a proposal for concurrent sessions at the AASL 14th National Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 5-8, 2009. The theme of the conference is “Rev Up Learning @ your library.” The conference will offer a number of 75-minute peer-reviewed concurrent sessions. As in previous conferences, program content must address any or all of the three areas of responsibility as identified in Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning:
- Learning and Teaching
- Information Access
- Program Administration
The National Conference 2009 committee encourages proposals that aim to inform conference attendees of the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. Proposals can be submitted and edited using an online submission process. The deadline for proposals is Monday, December 1.
Become an AASL follower on Twitter; Submit a proposal for AASL National Conference November 12, 2008
Posted by Melissa Jacobsen in : AASL News, AASL2009, Community , add a commentJoin AASL’s newest social networking site for members
AASL recently added another venue to its social networking offerings for AASL members. Are you a follower? Check for AASL the next time you are on Twitter to stay connected.
While we are it, have you joined AASL’s group on Facebook, yet?
If not, be sure to look AASL up the next time you are there. Search for the
“American Association of School Librarians.”
Submit proposals for concurrent sessions at AASL’s 14th National Conference
The deadline is approaching to submit a proposal for concurrent sessions at AASL’s 14th National Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The theme of the conference is “Rev Up Learning @ your library.” The conference will offer a number of 75-minute peer-reviewed concurrent sessions. As in previous conferences, program content must address any or all of the three areas of responsibility as identified in Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning:
- Learning and Teaching
- Information Access
- Program Administration
The National Conference 2009 committee encourages proposals that aim to inform conference attendees of the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.
The deadline for proposals is Monday, December 1. Proposals can be submitted using AASL’s online submission process.
