Library Media Tech Talk

First Conference to Attend Since Pandemic I have been away from public school since the summer of 2020. I have spent the past two years working nearly full-time for the Arkansas Army National Guard. In March, I had the opportunity to teach as an adjunct instructor for McDaniel College in their school librarianship program. It has been wonderful to be involved with graduate students preparing to join our wonderful profession as school librarians. After beginning to teach the course, I discovered that the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media had scheduled a conference in April. I thought the timing would be perfect to attend especially since the course I was teaching covered Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). There are few better places for one to develop a PLN than at a conference! When I was a school librarian, I really loved attending conferences. This was especially true if I could attend one near the end of school in the spring semester. It was always exciting to learn new te...

This has been one of the most active years for me professionally. I'm nearing the end of a third master's degree program with an ALA accredited MLIS. There have been several opportunities to publish over the past year. All these activities have made it difficult to write blog articles as frequently as I would like. I simply had to make time to write a reflection about my first time to attend an American Library Association Annual Conference! I am very grateful to the Lakeside School District for sending me, and I want to share some of my big takeaways from the event. I will also share what I hope to bring back to campus this year as a result of the experience. Michelle Obama It was very exciting to hear Michelle Obama speak in the opening session of the ALA conference! She spoke primarily about her new book, Becoming , a memoir about her life.  I recall that she talked about the importance of the library in her life when she was growing up. She reflected about reading t...

Introduction Back in the fall of 2016, my friend Tracey Wong asked me to present a session with her at the Computers in Libraries Conference in Washington, D.C. Tracey is a school librarian in New York. I was very excited about this opportunity since I had never attended an out of state library conference. This was a chance to attend a national library/ technology conference and share our best practices! Preparation Tracey had her session, "Game Design as a Catalyst for Learning", accepted by the conference. We both applied for the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEExpert) travel program and were accepted. ( Read this earlier blog article I wrote about being an MIEExpert if you want to know more .) With the travel program, Microsoft would send us to the conference and provide for our travel and room accommodations. Now we were ready to start creating our content. Brainstorming Content Both of us had cool tools we wanted to share. Tracey had been using V...

We have made several exciting connections via Skype during the fall of 2016. I want to share about three connections we have made in the last few weeks. These are all special to me for different reasons, and I will share about the significance of each. What is amazing about each of these events is that they wouldn't have happened if not for the magic of social media. If you are not a connected educator, I hope these stories will convince you to start connecting (for your growth and for your learning community). Connecting With Shannon Miller I have previously shared that Shannon McClintock Miller inspired me to create this blog and to become a connected teacher librarian. I heard her speak at the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media Conference in 2014. Since taking up these practices that year (and learning more about Twitter through our assistant principal, Mathew Thornton), my professional life has forever changed. I've been blessed with thousands of new educator f...

I'm delighted to be joined by  El izabeth Hutchinson in  this  blo g ar ticle. Elizabeth is a chartered librarian on the Island of Guernsey which is located in the English Channel. She is the head of School's Library Service there which serves the Bailiwick of Guernsey island schools. Introduction    (Elizabeth)   Way back in January I was looking for information about  M ystery  S kype. It was something that I had been interested in but did not know where to start. I found  S tony's  blog post about his first  M ystery  S kype attempt with lots of suggestions on how it worked. He made me feel that this was something that I could at last try so I took the plunge and sent him a  T weet .    This is the Tweet that changed us both! It turned out that Stony was keen to try his  first international  M ystery  H angout and was in the middle of a library  re-vamp ....