Sunday, March 18, 2012

SCASL 2012: Advocacy Starts With You @ Your Library

Our state conference was held a few days ago. It was wonderful to reconnect with librarians that I normally only see virtually and meet a few new ones face to face like the super sweet, Jennifer Tazerouti, my Twitter bud, Teresa Bunner, and Randye Polk. Thanks, Randye, for the encouraging words about blogging.

Here are a few other highlights for me:


1. Presenting with Carla Nash on ereaders. As you can see from our shirts it was a Kindle Vs Nook eReader Duel. At times things got a little heated.


You may wonder who won our duel. Check out our Prezis here and here and decide for yourself. We had a full room and lots of questions. It was fun for us and hopefully informative for those in attendance.

2. I had the pleasure of listening to Donalyn Miller deliver one of our keynote addresses. And best yet, I facilitated one of her book talk session and met her in person. It was wonderful. If you haven't read her book, The Book Whisperer, you should. Really, go now and buy it! Then buy one for every ELA teacher in your building. You can see her slides from the keynote here. If you are curious about her book recommendations you can see many of them on this list.




3. Presenting with Jen Chesney and Kelly Knight on blogging. Another full session, lots of sharing with those in attendance and I even learned about a few blogs that I added to my reader. I will put our list of recommended blogs on my wiki.

Jen <span class=Chesney, Tamara Cox and Kelly Knight presenting on blogging.">

4. The SCASL Learning Commons organized by Cathy Jo Nelson. I love the Learning Commons idea and think that Cathy Jo Nelson pulled this off wonderfully. I pitched in a short talk about nontraditional shelving and Common Core. Great fun!

5. Spending time with my Anderson One librarians was rejuvenating. I am so proud of these ladies. We come from all backgrounds and experience levels yet we share, connect, and encourage each other.


Big thanks to all that helped make the conference happen, especially Heather Loy. Now I'm looking forward to leaving for Illinois in a few days for the Follett New Leaf in Learning Conference. Midwest, here we come. Can you handle two wacky, Southern librarians? Let's go, Tiff.

3 comments:

  1. The Kindle & Nook prezis look like they are supposed to be different links but go to the same thing--is that right?? Shall I use these (or this) as your session links on our ScASL e-handouts site?

    GREAT reflections Tamara. Sharing!!

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  2. They look the same, but one compares the Kindle and Nook Touch. The other compares Kindle Fire and Nook Color. You can use these as our session links. Thank you

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  3. Thanks for the shout out Tamara! I am such a big fan! You are awesome and I appreciate you and the inspiration you provide for me. It was great to see you at SCASL. That's a lovely picture of you and Donalyn Miller I might add! Who took that? ;-)

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