Highlights of NCSLMA 2014

I just returned from a whirlwind couple of days at the North Carolina School Library Media Association conference in Winston-Salem and as with last year, my first year at the conference, I learned more than I can blog about in one entry.  

I did not have a single session with a bad presenter, took good notes from all of them; that said, the two presenters that stood out the most were Jennifer Lagarde and this morning's keynote speaker, John Schumacher.

Highlights of ideas that I want to take back to my library:

In a session on book reports, we were asked what we remembered best about book reports as a kid.  1980s book reports were notebook paper, pencil, opening paragraphs of "This book is about...", and the torture session for us shy kids, known as "the oral report."  Talk fast, get done, slink to your desk, try to hide under it until high school graduation day.  I had never considered book reports until I learned in this session about the 21st century book report:  Toontastic or Tellagami for the iPad; Photostory 3, already installed on school computers; kid-specific blogging sites.  I had seen Tellagami in a professional development session last summer and installed it on my work iPad, but I had not used it until yesterday.  It was surprisingly easy.

Writing activities to meet the Common Core standards:  Students write about a character who desperately needs a vacation, and/or a fictional location to take a vacation.  I'd like to try these out myself; I vote Hagrid from Harry Potter for the former, and Hogsmeade for the latter.  Another writing activity is to take a picture book with no words and have students write a story.  So far I think the only one I have is "Do You Want to Be My Friend?" by Eric Carle, but I can work on that.

I was in desperate need for North Carolina-based research topics for fourth grade.  Every kid can't research the Lost Colony or the Wright Brothers, and I'm not sure NC State Parks (aka "In this project you tell Mrs. Gentile where to go hiking next") was the best tie-in for the curriculum.  But I have a few more to run by the fourth grade teachers, including North Carolina lighthouses and minerals.

Networking:

I made a lot of connections this year, doubled the list of people I'm following on Twitter and learned more about how to use it on a professional basis.  I had been resistant to Twitter when I heard about it in grad school, primarily because I talk too much for 140 characters and could not figure out how to find out if people are responding to me.  That aspect has gotten a lot easier with practice, including the chats with local librarians this school year, and I've now gotten information on a statewide weekly chat.

One of many useful comments that came from "Mr. Schu"'s speech this morning was that something worth tweeting about, should be happening every day in the library.  I'm on that, because I'm sure it is, it's just a matter of paying attention.