On Saturday, April 5 at the Scholastic warehouse/office building in Danbury, the Connecticut Association of School Librarians and the Connecticut Library Consortium collaborated with Scholastic to hold their first unconference. Around 60 library media specialists came to spend the day learning together. It was so much fun to visit with friends and meet new ones as we munched on breakfast goodies.
An important part of the morning is creating the schedule. For many participants, this was a new experience, but the board filled up quickly. I loved how people worked together to create learning opportunities for everyone, even if that meant moving sessions around.
We started the learning off with the amazing Bill Derry (Twitter: @billderry) from the Westport Public Library. He was full of energy and excitement, just what we needed to kick the day off. Bill shared with us about his experiences with Makerspaces and boy does he have some wonderful things going on in the library. I loved that he was so excited to share about something new he found called Everyslide. He couldn't wait to try it out with us. It was so encouraging to hear him speak about the collaboration that goes on in Westport. I am really excited to head down to the Makerfaire they are holding on April 26 from 10-4.
An important part of the morning is creating the schedule. For many participants, this was a new experience, but the board filled up quickly. I loved how people worked together to create learning opportunities for everyone, even if that meant moving sessions around.
We started the learning off with the amazing Bill Derry (Twitter: @billderry) from the Westport Public Library. He was full of energy and excitement, just what we needed to kick the day off. Bill shared with us about his experiences with Makerspaces and boy does he have some wonderful things going on in the library. I loved that he was so excited to share about something new he found called Everyslide. He couldn't wait to try it out with us. It was so encouraging to hear him speak about the collaboration that goes on in Westport. I am really excited to head down to the Makerfaire they are holding on April 26 from 10-4.
Session 1 got started a little late, but people moved to where they needed to be. I talked with a group about my experiences with Twitter and what it has done for my libraries and my own learning. Getting started with Twitter ideas is here. For Session 2 I headed upstairs to talk about new apps/websites. This is always a favorite because I always learn some great things or am reminded about ones that I have wanted to try. Click here for some great ideas and visit Jane Martellino's Smore page for more here! We headed downstairs to meet up before lunch and hear from Scholastic about their new product ScienceFlix. Looks like a great resource! Lunch gave us time to visit with one another and select our last session. I was very excited to go and talk to others about Makerspaces in the library. I am still working on figuring out how to create one in my libraries. It was great talking to others about what they are doing. Here are my notes. I'm still looking for more folks creating makerspaces in their elementary libraries. The final session was followed by an unconference tradition of the Smackdown! Anyone who wants to can share something they learned that day and it is all recorded on a Google Doc for everyone to use. Lots of great ideas were recorded here. Prizes were raffled off, including a beautiful spring basket of flowers, a year of Scholastic Science Flix, and an iPad mini.
Thank you to all for an amazing day of learning and connecting!
Thank you to all for an amazing day of learning and connecting!