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ALA and ISTE: policy statements and what we share January 2, 2009

Posted by Debbie Stafford in : AASL News, ALA MW2007, Community, SKILLS Act , add a comment

As reported in an earlier post, ALA has submitted “Opening the Window to a Larger World: Libraries’ Role in Changing America,” a policy statement for the new presidential administration’s transition team. ISTE  (The International Society for Technology in Education) also published a policy statement, “ISTE Policy Recommendations for President-Elect Obama”

Comparing the two documents highlights similarities, the most obvious being increased funding.  ALA’s document leads off with the need for a strong policy to provide broadband to libraries and to both increase and simplify the E-Rate program; ISTE’s document ends with the same request.  

Second, both organizations advocate for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), although there is difference between the two concerning specific parts of the ESEA. ALA pushes for inclusion of school library media centers, while ISTE promotes inclusion of the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation Act (ATTAIN). Further differences include ALA advocating for the “Support authorized funding for the “Improving Literacy Through Schools Library Program” in No Child Left Behind (NCLB)” while ISTE pushes for “Enhancing Education Through Technology (Title II-D, NCLB).” Though not mentioned in the ALA document, AASL supports the Skills Act, which create a standard of a certified school librarian in every school. The ISTE document includes a section concerning expanding the definition of “fully qualified” to include skills in integrating technology into the curriculum.

Each organization’s document includes an area of focus not shared by the other. ALA includes a section concerning “Safe Computing and Children,” advocating for education rather than reliance on Internet filtering. ISTE includes a focus on supporting technology innovation and use of data to assess student learning. Both documents stress the importance of education and the need for support.

Take the opportunity to read both documents, follow the ALA Midwinter town hall meeting and voice your opinions through your elected officials. 

AASL National Conference speakers announced November 26, 2008

Posted by mjones in : AASL News, AASL2009, Conferences , add a comment

danah 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:

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 mjones in : AASL News, AASL2009, Community , add a comment

Join 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:

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.

Tweeting YALSA’s Lit Symposium November 10, 2008

Posted by wstephens in : Conferences , add a comment

If Ranganathan’s old saw about every reader having his book is true, perhaps the 2.0 corollary is that every content creator has his application. I think I have found mine in Twitter.

I didn’t get Twitter for a while. It seemed mostly about alerting people when you were delayed in what airport or specifying exactly at which Starbucks you would spending the afternoon. But I liked the way that institutional users like YALSA and SLJ were using it to alert followers to blogs updates, and I found enough good stuff from my tweeps to keep me checking in daily…and it turned into a handy way to save and share my own links to sites or photos. Twitterers, you can “follow me.”

So I was a half-hearted twitterer, but this weekend, I tripled my updates over the course of a few days. How? As part of the AASL 2.0 Task Force, I have spent some time talking and thinking about how to make the AASL conference in Charlotte “more 2.0″ — working on ways to establish tagging schemes ahead of the event, recruit content creators for backchannels, and publicizing these ways of participating at a distance for those who can’t travel to attend the conference. You will definitely be hear more about that before next November.

I decided to gear up for Charlotte by practicing tweeting from YALSA’s literature symposium in Nashville over the weekend. I consulted with @lbraun200 and @librainiac to establish an official hashtag (#yalsalit08) on the conference wiki and started typing frantically from the first session Saturday morning…quickly connecting via http://twemes.com/yalsalit08with @yoyology and @hipstrlibgrl, and the dozen or so other people who chimed in over the two days. The only downside was that us tweeps tended to attend the same sessions…so I didn’t get to use twitter to virtually “sit in” on the other sessions as much as I had hoped.

The telegraphic transcription of “tweeting” a conference reminds me of nothing so much as my long-ago career as a newspaper features writer. Of course, another career as an English teacher has led me to tweet almost exclusively in complete sentences, not the twitter norm.

I took my tweets from the conference and sorted them in excel to produce a chronological symposium experience blog which I stored on a Google site …much easier to access than the few sheets of paper I had invariably used for notes, which would disappear into my desk never to be seen again. So the tweeting experience made the whole symposium “sticky” for me in a new way. Tweeting an event makes you analyze, filter, and restate the main themes from the fabulous presenters in real time and keeps that content in a static form for consultation over time. And, as Linda Braun presented in her symposium session “Reading, It’s Not Just Books Anymore,” Twitter can be used in instruction for collaborative authorship.

Twitter might just be your 2.0 application, too.

Conferences, lots to choose from! October 5, 2008

Posted by Debbie Stafford in : Check this out!, Conferences, Learning, Opportunities , add a comment

After the rush of a new school year I was reorganizing my desk. Among the items I re discovered was the program for last October’s AASL conference in Reno. I enjoyed looking over the program but it made me wish this were the year for another AASL conference. I know that the AASL Fall Forum (October 17 – 19 Oak Park Illinois) is near but I will not be able to attend. I am hoping that a few people will be blogging on this site from that meeting.

 

Meanwhile, I got to wondering what other school library related conferences might be in the works. I knew from LM_NET postings that several were coming up. I asked on LM_NET for a list as a Target. One thing led to another and the project turned out to be bigger than I planned. It would have been nice to have done this a month ago as a number of conferences have come and gone and several are going on NOW.

 

I have the list that I created posted on the LM_NET wiki for those who want to look it over (left navigation pane, Conferences 2008-2009). There is an excel file also.  The list does not just show school library conferences, there are some technology conferences where school librarians are major partners are also listed. As a disclaimer, I expect there are some errors both of omission and of information and I would be happy to make corrections as I receive them.

 

I also made some observations while looking at my list.

 

Over the summer there were five conferences.

Three recent conferences were in September.

There are 18 possible conferences in October (Six this past week-end).

November has 10.

December has three

January has two

February has three

March has six

April has eight

May has three

 

Four conferences have @ as part of their theme as it @your library.

 

Several of the conferences have established wikis to allow for post conference sharing. Take a look at the Kentucky School Media Association wiki  or the Rhode Island RIEMA08 for some examples.

 

Some of the conferences are co-sponsored, some examples;

Oregon and Washington associations offer a combined conference.

Colorado offered a summer conference co-sponsored by Technology in Education.

Georgia’s conference is a combined effort by Gerogia Library Association, The Georgia Library Media Association, and the Georgia Association for Instructional Technology.

Kentucky’s conference is a collaboration between 2008 National Diversity in Libraries Conference (NDLC) Kentucky Library Association, Kentucky School Media Association, and Southeastern Library Association. Some of the conferences are state library conferences co-sponsored by the state school library association or the state association has a division or special interest group for school libraries. Lastly, there are four regional library associations who are also sponsoring conferences. The Kansas Library Association conference is a joint conference with the Mountain Plains Library Association Conference for example.  At any rate, there are lots of opportunities for school librarians to attend a conference. I recommend going, you always come back from a conference with new ideas and new energy.