Web 2.0 Takes Center Stage at AASL’s National Conference
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SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 10/30/2007 2:00:00 PM
There’s no denying that blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, and social networking sites were the hot topics of discussion at the American Association of School Librarians' (AASL) 13th National Conference in Reno, NV, October 24–28.
“A lot of Web 2.0,” says Cecelia Solomon, a media specialist at West Hernando Middle School in Brooksville, FL, describing her first experience at an AASL conference.
Attendees packed into more than a dozen tech sessions, many of which focused specifically on 2.0 tools in the media center. Among those presenting were Springfield Township (PA) High School Media Specialist Joyce Valenza, Christopher Harris, the coordinator of the school library system at Genesee Valley (NY) BOCES, and SLJ Test Drive columnist Jeffrey Hastings, who handed out fabulous high-tech giveaways during his well-attended “Gadgetpalooza” session.
Indeed, keeping students up-to-date was a major focus of the conference, as AASL officially unveiled its “Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.” The standards were a much-anticipated publication designed to help librarians identify the skills and strategies students need to become competent and ethical users of information technology, said AASL President Sara Kelly Johns. “We realize that we have a lot of challenges ahead of us,” Johns added. “But we are demonstrating here at the conference that we are really doing something about it.”
Part of that challenge was discussed by J. Linda Williams, chair of the No Child Left Behind Task Force, in her session "No Child Left Behind Reauthorization: Enhancing Library Media Specialist Role in School Achievement." Williams stressed the importance for passing the SKILLS Act, which would require a state-certified media specialist in every K–12 school building by 2010 and include school librarians in the “highly qualified” category of NCLB, up for renewal later this year.
Williams, AASL’s president during 2005–2006, is now running for president of the American Library Association (ALA)—and many conference-goers showed their support by wearing “Linda Williams for ALA President” buttons. “We need to mobilize all the youth divisions to support Linda’s campaign” said an attendee who asked to remain anonymous. “We can’t let what happened to Barbara Stripling happen to her.” Stripling, who now heads New York City school libraries, lost her bid for the ALA presidency to Maurice Freedman in 2003.
The conference featured three full-day and five half-day pre-conference workshops, several school and educational tours, more than 100 educational sessions, author events, and more than 200 exhibiting companies.
SLJ’s Book Review Managing Editor Luann Toth’s popular panel discussion, “A Passion for Research,” featured nonfiction authors Jim Murphy, Ann Bausum, Kathleen Krull, and Marc Aronson, who spoke about how they researched their most recent books using primary sources, academic titles, the Internet, and photo research.
The focus on global issues was played out in “A Small World—Technology Connecting Kids to Kids,” where media specialists Ronda Hassig and Kathleen Hill showed how their sixth-grade students used the United Nations’ “What's Going On?” film series, on subjects ranging from AIDS and child soldiers, to instructions on how to create their own public service announcements.
“Liven Up Your Library: Fifteen Ways Under Fifteen Dollars,” presented by Jennifer Wetzel of the Hendron-Lone Oak Elementary School in Paducah, KY, showed librarians on tight budgets how to add pizzazz to their classes by, for example, playing “Library Hangman” with the $2.95 plastic hangman game from Oriental Trading or by having students dip their hands into a gallon-size decorated paint can filled with vocabulary words and their meanings.
Best-selling author Dan Pink, the opening session keynote speaker, urged attendees to examine the spaces in their schools. “Improving a school's physical environment can increase test scores as much as 11 percent, according to a study by Georgetown University,” Pink said.
Omar Wasow, cofounder of BlackPlanet.com and a tech analyst, brought the conference to an end during his keynote, which closed the conference. He called libraries “public parks for the brain” that "inform and transform" by offering students critical thinking and research skills, as well as a place where kids can work and reflect with fewer distractions.
More than 3,792 librarians, exhibitors, and guests gathered at this year’s conference, slightly less than the 3,800 who turned up for the 2005 event in Pittsburgh, but more than the 3,482 who attended the 2003 conference in Kansas City. Some speculated that the conference’s remote location—many had to take two flights to get to Reno—kept attendees away. But, overall, the energy and excitement this year was high.
