by Pam Bartusiewicz, Katrina A. Bromann, Kathy Tisoncik, Jane Harper and Sandy Sullivan, MLS Members

The 2009 ISLMA conference Futures Begin by Embracing Change (http://www.islma.org/conference09.htm) took place this year in Springfield, October 29 – 31.  "This year's conference once again built on the expertise of our association members who are the true experts in school library practice.", states Jeremy Dunn, from Argo Community High School and ISLMA president- elect." I always come away from an ISLMA conference humbled by our members' dedication to teaching and learning and inspired by my peers' energy and innovation. Kudos to this year's conference steering committee for putting together a great event!"

Several library staff from MLS School and Public libraries attended and offered to share with the rest of the membership what they took away from the conference, the speakers they heard and the sessions they attended.

Embracing Change
by Pam Bartusiewicz,Learning Center Director, Brookwood  Middle School and Brookwood Junior High, Brookwood School District 167 (http://www.brookwood.s-cook.k12.il.us).

Futures begin By Embracing Change was the theme of this year's ISLMA Conference.  Ann M. Martin, past president of American Association of School Libraries (AASL), summed up the new Standards for the 21st Century when she said, "Think, Create, Share and Grow."  I would like to add one more: Read.  

During the Conference several books were mentioned:  World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, Seven Steps to an Award Winning School Library Program by Ann M. Martin, Accountability for Results by Sandra G. Watkins, The Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink, Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, and The Power of Reading, Second Edition: Insights from the Research by Stephen D. Krashen.  

Doug Johnson in his session Integrating Technology Skills Into an Information Literacy Curriculum shared his words of wisdom on forming a Personal Learning Network (http://www.doug-johnson.com). Doug suggested that we participate in blogs and recommended http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com to get you started. My favorite quote from Doug is "Books are the original laptops!"  

Kurt Pearson, from McHenry High School shared practical and easy solutions to jump start change in your library during his presentation available at www.dist156.org/islma.  

Change is difficult for many, but in today's world we need to walk the walk and talk the talk.  We need to asses, collect data and share it with our administrators.  Speakers Georgeann Burch and Linda Diekman in their presentation First Steps to Effective Assessment proved to us that we already assess our students every day.  They encouraged us to take one more step and record that data, suggestion we compose a library mission statement that closely reflects the mission statement of our school.  Visit http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/bestlist/bestwebsitestop25.cfm  for a look at Web 2.0, curriculum, media sharing and content collaboration as examples.

To sum up this conference, we need to follow the Standards of the 21st Century not only for our students but for ourselves and embrace change!

Embracing Change Interactively in the Library
By Katrina A. Bromann

Katrina is a recent graduate of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  She is currently in her first year as Media Specialist at Oak Ridge Elementary School in Palos Hills (http://www.npd117.net).

The take away session for Katrina was Michelle Harris (District Librarian, Heyworth Elementary & Jr./Sr. High School http://www.husd4.k12.il.us) and Amy Oberts’s (Media Specialist, Oakland Elementary School http://www.district87.org ) session titled, “Using SMART Tools to Touch the Future.

For this dynamic duo the future began by embracing the exciting changes and opportunities offered by interactive technology in their school libraries.  They presented a riveting and inspiring session which provided a myriad of ideas for school librarians to incorporate interactive whiteboards into the library setting.

Interactive whiteboards, such as the SMART Board, Mimio, or ActivBoard, are increasingly prevalent in many schools and classrooms.  While support materials and sample projects exist, the presenters recognized a need for activities and lessons created specifically for the library.  To that end, they created a wiki for school librarians where they can collaborate to create, share, and celebrate their triumphs with interactive whiteboards. 

The presenters have experience with SMART software, and thus the wiki is geared towards use with that particular brand.  However, websites compatible with all brands are welcome on the wiki, and most lessons can be adapted to other boards. The wiki is divided into sections, which are like stepping stones toward mastery of the interactive whiteboard.  SMART Starts introduces the user to the SMART Board simply by using it with interactive websites that already exist—no work necessary other than turning on the board! 

Try Pigeon Presents (http://www.pigeonpresents.com/index.aspx) for fun with Mo Willems’ characters.  Next, take SMART Steps by adapting your slide shows, booktalks, or drawing programs to the board.  After you are comfortable using the board, you’ll be able to make your own SMART Creations: lessons you create using the tools and templates available.  A suggestion for elementary school librarians is to check out the lessons already available for use with the Monarch 2010 nominees.

Check out Michelle and Amy presentation at http://smarterlibraries.wikispaces.com. 

School & Public Libraries Attend Conference Together

Kathy Tisoncik and Jane Harper, Library Media Specialists at Homewood-Flossmoor High School (http://www.hfhighschool.org) attended this year’s conference with Sandy Sullivan, a Reference and Readers’ Advisory Librarian at the Homewood Public Library (http://www.homewoodlibrary.org).

The overall theme of this year’s conference was Embracing Change, and we attended several outstanding sessions that definitely inspired us to make some very positive and productive changes for the students and staff members we serve.  Because there were three of us, our conference strategy was to attend as many different sessions as possible and compare notes. The professionalism, expertise, and spirit of sharing among our school library colleagues was evident and impressive.

We received “just in time” information from experts in two areas of our collection that are becoming increasingly popular.  K.C. Boyd, Area Library Coordinator, CPS Department of Libraries and Information Services, recommended collection development strategies and titles in her session, Discovering Urban Fiction for Middle School (http://www.slideshare.net/kcboyd1/discovering-urban-fiction-middle-school).

Michael Cart and Christine Jenkins presented A New Literature for a New Millennium: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Literature for YAs Comes of Age.  Both of their sessions provided us with the knowledge and background we need to develop these newer and growing areas of our collection with confidence and authority. 

All three of us came to the conference focused on finding ideas for integrating technology into our programs, particularly interactive Web 2.0 applications.  We were not disappointed.  In fact, there were so many offerings in this area that we weren’t able to get to all the ones we wanted to.

Nadine Norris of Forest Ridge School District 142 presented Essential Tools for Enhancing Professional Learning. Google Forms, Sharetabs, Slideshare and Screencast.com were just a few of the many tools she suggested for sharing resources with students and teachers.  More information is available on her site at www.techforteachers.net.

In the session titled The Gutenberg Club – Literacy Beyond the Library Walls, Elizabeth Magar and Marjorie Siuta (Woodstock North High School) showed us how to use Haiku (http://www.haiku-os.org) to create an online book club. Their principal, Brian McAdow, also spoke and it was exciting to see how enthusiastic, supportive, and involved he and other administrators are in this project.  Ms. Magar and Ms. Siuta reported that their circulation statistics have skyrocketed which they attribute to the online book club.  Because we already have a monthly book discussion group, we can take advantage of this technology to set up an online component to enrich our students’ experiences. 

Three public librarians delivered a dynamic and informative presentation, Using Multimedia to Promote Literature. Alexandra Tyle-Annen (Homer Township Public Library), Kelly Laszczak-Durov (Lagrange Public Library) and Joe Marcantonio (Plainfield Public Library), demonstrated creative and fun ways to promote reading with free online tools like animoto, flickr and VoiceThread. Their presentations can be viewed at http://tiny.cc/peVoH , http://tiny.cc/7IT9Z and http://tiny.cc/rM7Io.

Tasha Squires, author of Library Partnerships, Making Connections Between School and Public Libraries (ISBN 978-1-57387-362-8), spoke on the topic of partnering though technology.  She focused on how school librarians can partner with public librarians though the sharing and creation of blogs, MySpace or Facebook pages, YouTube contributions, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, e-flyers, and the sharing of databases. Sharing resources and collaborating with one another means a win-win for both school and public librarians. 

Finally, Judy Gressel, media specialist from New Trier High School, spoke on the topic Reach Out to Students with Facebook.  Even though Facebook is blocked at most schools, teachers and librarians can still reach out to students outside of school by gathering “fans”.  Instead of creating a personal account, a librarian can create a fan page with really cool tools, applications, and widgets on it such as book recommendations, searching the library OPAC, creating citations, ask a librarian instant reference help, and many others.

Thanks goes to each of our guest writers for a wonderful summary of some of the sessions at the ISLMA 2009 Conference.  Questions about this article can be emailed to the MLS Consultants at consultants@mls.lib.il.us.

 

Published November 18, 2009 in vol. 3, iss. 22 [View]