Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

Next week, March 12-14, the South Carolina Association of School Librarians will meet up in Columbia, SC for the annual SCASL Conference. This year’s theme, Power Up @ Your Library, is very fitting, as there are some POWERFUL guest speakers, authors, and more coming to rejuvenate me! Annette Lamb, Larry Johnson, Joyce Valenza, Gail Dickinson…I almost feel like I’m going to a national level conference rather than a state level one. Our President-elect, Valerie Byrd-Fort has one a FANTASTIC job putting our conference together this year. I cannot wait until Wednesday next week!

The conference program was released today, and I have made a preliminary outline of what I want to attend–and guess what? I’m not skipping a single event. I will be exhausted when I get home Friday evening. Here is a rough itinerary (with session titles abbreviated for me) that is subject to change.

WEDNESDAY
Concurrent 1 (4:15-5:15)
James Bryan – Historical Fiction
or
Perry McLeod- Digital Storytelling

Exploratorium and All-Conference Reception (5:30-7:30)
SCASL Blogs! & SCASL Flickrs! (Okay, so you may not know that this is my responsibility and so I will be hosting it–IT! OMG!! I have not even begun to put together a display board or anything. I better get busy!! Late supper too-shucks…Someone wait for me to go eat.

THURSDAY
Concurrent 2 (8:00-9:00)
Joyce Valenza – Library Websites

Concurrent 3 (9:15-10:15)
Gail Dickinson NBPTS–>NBCT Now what?
or
Annette Lamb – PPT Sidekicks
or
Larry Johnson – Re-Imagine…

12:00-1:15 Meet authors/special guests
(Hob-nob with Authors Jaime Adoff, Eloise Greenfield, Will Hobbs, Alan Katz, Michelle Knudsen, and special guests Joyce Valenza, Annette Lab, and Larry Johnson!)
SCASL Business Meeting, 1:30 – 3:00

Concurrent 4 (3:15-4:15)
Gail Dickinson – AASL Standards
or
Annette Lamb – Re-Imagine…
or
Larry Johnson – RSS feeds in classroom

FRIDAY
Concurrent 5 (8:00-9:00)
MINE-Feed the Mind w/ RSS
(Note: there were some awesome sessions planned at the same time as mine, and thankfully some of the ones going on at the same time (Like MaryAnn Sansonetti’s “Ipodabilities” and Carole McGrath’s “T-N-T” I saw previously at a different conference. The only thing I have to worry about–other than an obscene early time to present–is that everyone else might choose theirs over mine. Oh, wait, that would mean fewer people in my session, which translates to an easier preso to give. Ok, I can live with it after-all!)

Concurrent 6 (9:15-10:15)
Debbie Keenan/Margie Edgerton – Flexible schedule
or
Julia Davis – Google Lit Trips
(I need to go to the Keenan/Edgerton session for ideas on a different preso I’m giving…but I want to go to Julias–how will I ever decide?)

Concurrent 7 (10:15-11:15)
Donna Shannon – Building a Knowledge Base in Reading
or
Andi Fansher – Moviemaker Magic

Awards Luncheon, 12:00 – 2:00
Eat with my Horry County LMS colleagues as we wait on the edge of our seats for the announcing of this years’ SC Book Award Nominees.

Okay so everyone can see that I have a jam-packed conference planned for myself, and still have many decisions to make. I’m carrying my laptop, and with free wifi, I plan to be connected to my network everywhere I go. Any of you loyal readers, would you like for me to “Ustream” anything? I have found out in the past I cannot “coveritlive” very well or even semi blog during sessions. I have to reflect and post. So I definitely could Ustream some. I’ll be taking a lot of pictures too, and will be posting them to the SCASL Flickrs photostream. So if you are not coming, you can virtually attend compliments of me. Let me know.

Filed by Cathy Nelson at 11:03 pm under 21st century,Conferences,Flickr,Information Literacy,Joyce Valenza,Professional Development,South Carolina  Tagged Information Literacy, Professional Development, SCASL, SCASL08
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