Thanks to Robyn Beyer and the organising committee of the Northern Sydney Regional Teacher-Librarian conference for kindly inviting me to present the keynote today. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The delegates were enthusiastic and treated me very kindly indeed.
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore
My pre-conference survey elicited a number of interesting responses. I have been collecting this kind of data for 4-5 years now and something is changing. Teacher-Librarians, in my previous experience, were resisting the inevitable changes wrought by the internet/WWW. No longer:
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore
In our conversations over morning tea a number of questions were posed and resources requested. Here’s some links, in response to questions, that delegates may find useful if they experience a (hopefully inevitable) burst of post-conference enthusiasm:
- Join the social bookmarking site Diigo or check out all my tags, especially for digital citizenship.
- Twitter is my favourite professional (and personal) learning tool. Find out more about Twitter hashtags, metadata and the concept of a folksonomy.
- Many people wanted to know more about how to link their iPad Kindle app with Twitter and Facebook. Read this.
- Read instructions for mirroring your iPad for presentations.
- Try Reeder for RSS feeds after setting up Google Reader
- Thinking about family history and digital footprints?
- Here are two (part one and part two) other presentations to Teacher-Librarians from 2011
- Try my social media page for videos and tips
- Kids who read succeed
- The videos for Infowhelm, Project Glass and Twitter Love Song
Re-designing libraries
I should also say that Kevin Hennah impressed me greatly today with his ideas about library design. Kevin has a very polished, thoughtful presentation style. In fact, he exudes ‘clever’. He certainly gave delegates ideas on how to manage the principal, as well as their libraries.
Check out Kevin’s thoughts about re-designing library spaces and try Limejuice, if you are looking for savvy graphic design, especially in the process of making your library signage an impressive aspect of the change process.
While Kevin was talking a thought came to mind about the ancient, lost library at Alexandria. This library had no ‘books’ but contained papyrus and parchment scrolls. We have much societal change taking place but ‘the library’ must continue if our civil society is to be maintained and extended. Libraries symbolise culture and knowledge. Librarians are the guides that help students and citizens to access this knowledge, at school and in the community.
Updating?
I’d just like to conclude with a reminder to the delegates, or any other teacher-librarians reading, about that collective noun mentioned. A ‘catalogue’ of (teacher) librarians just seems like it needs updating.
What collective noun would you suggest to represent an evolving and savvy profession?
A blogosphere of librarians. A kindle of librarians? A database of librarians? A twitter of librarians…..
Well done Robyn these collective nouns are all good. I want one that encompasses information, our skills of dissemination, our love of sharing and our love of reading…. is there one word for all of this!!!