Yesterday I attended SLAWNY's Fall Sharing 2013 at Hamburg's Union Pleasant Elementary. The event was well attended with about 80 professionals there to share their ideas and resources with one another. The first workshop consisted of 4 "speed rounds" lasting 15 minutes each. Of the choices available, I chose Ready, Set, Art: A Look at Programming Offered at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery with Jessica DiPlama, Elementary Library Programming for Autistic and Special Education Students with Susan Walterich, teacher-librarian and mother of an autistic child, and Classroom Management in the Elementary Library with Elizabeth Kick. I chose to stay at the last session for another round as new participants made the content fresh and I need all the classroom management support I can get. I'd say it has been my most challenging area of teaching so far this year but I did walk away with some new ideas that I intend to implement this coming week like playing classical music during book selection and checkout! The plan is to subliminally soothe and calm the students into a state of quiet contemplation..........I'll let you all know how that goes!
The keynote speaker at Fall Sharing was Shannon McClintock Miller, a teacher-librarian and technology integrator at Van Meter School in Iowa. I had been following Shannon's blog and using some of her great tips and ideas since the summer so hearing her present in person was a real treat. She shared a wealth of information on becoming and staying connected in the school library. She advised everyone to strive for the goal of becoming connected on Twitter and provided an array of ways in which Twitter helps to grow and facilitate your personal learning network as well as streamline your online presence. I spent a few hours going over the materials I came away with yesterday and I am excited to get started. I even found some key people she mentioned we should follow on Twitter and started searching some hashtags!
Here is the link to Shannon's presentation where she talks about the importance of building a personal learning network.
How to be a Connected School leader
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