Tales from a Loud Librarian

Louisiana Library Association always holds its annual conference in mid-March. This year it was in Alexandria, LA. Not much going on there, but the hotels were very convenient to the conference center, and I did not have to move my car until I was ready to leave for home. When LLA made the call for conference proposals, I applied to talk about tech tools for formative assessment. This was a presentation that I did for teachers and librarians in my district, and I thought it would be a good one for this conference. Some of these tools you migh be familiar with, but I hope that there is something new for you there: One of the tools that I discussed in my presentation was Padlet, so I asked those attending to post on a Padlet different ways that they could utilize the various tools in their library. Below are the suggestions that they posted. Use the slider bar at the bottom to see all of the nine columns. Please feel free to add your ideas to the Padlet also....

When March rolls around, I better be prepared for the annual Louisiana Librarian Association Conference. This year, I will be heading to Lafayette on Wednesday. I am going to be presenting twice. The presentation that I planned is how to manage the research process for middle and high school students. I have given this presentation before in a bit different format to teachers but never to a group of librarians. I am sharing the slide show for this presentation with you below, and you can find links embedded in the slides to view all the tools that I have created for my students. Please note that many of the points that I make in the presentation may be something that we take for granted as librarians. My point in reiterating them in the presentation is that it is important to teach both your teachers and students the importance of following correct format, using varied sources, citing correctly, etc. If we know how to follow correct research practices, it is our job to teach i...

For the past several weeks, I have been using free time to prepare for the presentation that I plan to give at the Louisiana Library Association's annual conference on March 9th. In past presentations, I have just touched on all the digital tools that I use when I collaborate with the teachers at my school, but this time, I wanted to be a bit more specific. I wanted to give concrete examples of the types of collaborations that I do and exactly what kinds of resources I include in the various tools that I create to share with students. I am a blatant thief and love learning about new things when I attend conferences. Once I hear about something new and exciting, I figure out how I can incorporate it into my bag of tricks and make it my own. My hope with this presentation is that others will find uses beyond what I do to invigorate their own library program. I wanted to save you some time if you did not want to view the whole presentation.  When I make a presentation, I usually ...

I wasn't planning to present at LLA this year. After presenting at LACUE in December, I asked Kelly if she would make the same presentation with me for the school librarians at the LASL Mid-Winter one day conference to be held in Lafayette, LA on a Saturday in January. Kelly agreed, reluctantly, because she really didn't want to give up a Saturday, but I really did not have to twist her arm very hard. I picked her up on January 25th at 6AM. We took I-10 until we found it closed due to the thick fog. We didn't worry because we had wanted to take highway 90 anyway. When we reached Gray which is a very, very small town in the middle of southern Louisiana, we could not go any farther. The state police closed 90 because of the density of the fog. Now what? We went into the Waffle House to regroup. It was a bit surreal but, the waitresses and other diners tried to figure out a way for us to reach our destination. Until all the roads reopened, there really was no way to get t...

Houston school children decorated these boots on display On April 2nd, I did something that I have never done before. I got on a plane at 6:30AM to go to Houston, and by 7PM that night I was back home in New Orleans and getting ready to walk my dog. Back in October, I received a call from the Catholic Librarian Association (CLA) asking if I would speak at their national conference about using digital resources in the library. I was hesitant at first because I have had to be away from school a number of days this year when I spoke at different conferences around the state of Louisiana. When my principal offered her support, I agreed to speak. As I was making my plans to attend, it just seemed too easy to go up for the day because the flight to Houston is less than an hour.  There was no where to stand in that room without having shadows on my face The title of my talk was, "Become a 21st Century School Librarian by Harnessing the Internet." In the talk I gave a ru...

2012   LAMP Keynote entitled -- define: Collaboration LAMP Tour: New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Rayne, and Ruston Find the wiki filled with resources here Here is the URL:  http://bit.ly/LALAMP2012   Lisa Valence is on the left and I am standing on the right This was taken after we finished the last presentation of the tour in Ruston, LA On September 10th, I started my tour across Louisiana as the keynote speaker for the  2012 LA LAMP  conference. LAMP is an acronym for Louisiana Association of Library and Media Professionals. It is free professional development designed for school librarians that travels to the librarians throughout the state. The vendors set up exhibits in the morning, and half the attendees attend the exhibits and half attend the keynote speech, and then they switch. Right before lunch, the vendors and keynote speaker pack up to go to the next venue. The local librarians have planned the professional development sessions for...

Click the picture above to enlarge it so that you can read our bios www.lalamp.org On September 10th, Lisa Valence and I will start our tour across the state of Louisiana to speak to librarians and hopefully a few teachers, too. We begin at home in New Orleans, then travel to Baton Rouge on the 11th, Lafayette on the 12th and finally, Ruston on the 13th. At each site we will give a 75 minute presentation two times. For the last three years, I have been the site coordinator for LAMP in New Orleans. I suggested that the keynote speaker this year should talk about collaboration. The powers that be said that was a great idea and that I should give the speech. If I decided not to give the keynote, then whoever is selected could pick the topic that interested them. I knew that for me to give a good presentation on collaboration, then I needed to have one of my collaborators with me. Lisa Valence teaches middle school English at PFTSTA. We have created some really excellent lessons over...