I arrived home last evening from my state school librarian conference. I attended the conference with my practicum supervisor and we had great fun.
We arrived Sunday afternoon and checked into our room. The first session Sunday was a 2:00. We both went to the session “Standards for the 21st Century Learner”, which are the new standards adopted by AASL. The session was a bit disappointing as it was very secondary school focused and we are both elementary folks. We did leave with a few ideas however. One good one was to do a artifact museum, where students learn what an artifact is and then they bring one to school, do a report on what it is and then they display it for week during which other students in the library get to see all the items.
For the rest of the sessions we split up so that we could both get ideas to share with each other.
During the second session I went to a presentation on the Mark Twain books for the 08-09 school year. The presenters gave some great ideas on things to do with the books. One thing in particular I took from the session was discussion questions that I will be putting in Moodle where students will be able to get on discussion boards and talk about the books.
Dinner Sunday was a great chance to see long lost colleagues and online professors whose faces I rarely see. We were treated to guest speaker, Dr. Monty Selby. Selby had us school librarians nearly rolling on the floor laughing with his songs and stories about the teaching field. He even wrote the a song for librarians! I appreciated his focus on teaching, since afterall we are school librarians.
Monday morning we attended that MASL business meeting for breakfast and part of it got a little heated when there was some disagreement about increased membership dues. They are increasing by $15 next year. People were upset that it was a 30% increase. I say $15 is not a big deal, considering all that the organization does for school libraries. It ended up passing anyways.
Monday morning I attended two sessions by Dr. Selby during which he gave more library specific ideas, such as playing music during check-out. Once the music is over, check out is done. Playing music as routines are done, such as coming into the library. Once the music is done everyone should be in their seat and ready to go. In one session he focused on brain research and talked to us about getting kids to cross their mid-section and playing softer/slower music before kids exit in order to calm them down. His ideas were excellent and I can’t wait to try some in my library! I am a music lover at my very core, so these sessions were of course eye-opening to me.
After a quick lunch, I had to run and get for my presentation that was scheduled for 2:45. I had agreed to meet the two other speakers at 1:00 to do a quick run through and make sure everything was set up. Unforunately, I did miss the lunch speaker because of this.
We had a decent turn out at our presenation, which was on the subject of motivating students in the library. We made a note in our workshop description that we would be utlizing discussion. We got the audience involved by asking them to share ideas on what they do to motivate students.
In each session five random people are asked to fill out a session evaluation. We got mostly 5’s and 4’s. One person gave us some 3’s with a note that said we should have done more presentation and less audience participation. The person said they don’t like being put on the spot. Regardless of that comment, we thought it was great to hear ideas from the audience and share some of our own at the same time.
Dinner Monday night was the Readers Award banquet. We had a great time finding out the winners of the awards. I had a feeling about the two winners and I was correct. I realy did not like Magnus and the Fire, even though the kids really did. So that goes to show how my opinion differs from that of my students. 
Tuesday morning I had breakfast with one of my professors and had a good time hearing her advice. I then attended a session on Photoshop tips for Library Webpages. I am very hands on and really wished that we would have each had a computer to practice what he was showing us in that session. He did give us a great handout.
We attended the lunch meeting on Tuesday and then it was time to head home *(with a three hour stop at the outlet mall, yeah for shopping).
I left out some parts such as visiting with vendors and shopping at the MASL store (where I spent money on bookmarks and the Show-Me curriculum) and attending a UCM meet and greet. I also purchased some of Dr. Selby’s stuff and am looking forward to time to explore it and then put it to use.
I think that about wraps up my comings and goings at the conference.
