IASL Conference 2011

Remember how it feels when you meet with other teacher-librarians from your neighborhood schools to talk? Ever been to a workshop with other teacher-librarians from your school board to discuss? Now imagine attending a conference, not just populated with teacher-librarians from your province (OLA) or your country (CLA), but with teacher-librarians from all over the world. That was my experience attending the International Association for School Libraries conference. This year was the 40th anniversary of the conference and the 2011 version was held in Kingston, Jamaica. I presented a professional paper based on my Masters of Education capping paper, on the factors that support the development of exemplary school library programs. The presentations were interesting but even more important was the chance to meet and network with teacher-librarians around the globe. I tweeted about each of the presentations I attended (and once I figure out how, I'll reproduce the tweets here on the blog). Here are some photos from the conference.

Here was the introductory sign greeting all the delegates. It's proof I was there!

Dr. Ross Todd from Rutgers Univesity (USA) gave one of the keynotes. He's a fantastic speaker and his ideas are thought-provoking.

Dr. Ray Doiron from the University of Prince Edward Island (Canada) spoke about "confronting the crisis of significance in 21st century school libraries".

Dr. Jami Jones from North Carolina (USA) spoke on "developing students' "mini-C" creativity through inquiry". We plan on working together on a journal article in the near future.

Dr. Carol Gordon, also from Rutgers (USA) addressed the crowd on "developing and supporting the 21st century reader".

Dr. Marcia Mardis of Florida (USA) encouraged us to contribute to school library research. I'm in! I'll talk about my research topic when it's further along.

Mark-Shane Scale from Jamaica made some good points on rethinking the role of the teacher-librarian in a post literate society.

The panelists spoke on facilitating multiple literacies (Patricia Roberts, Dr Jennifer Branch, Dr Charles Lambert, Dr. Barbara McNeil with moderator Dr Ray Doiron).

During the closing ceremonies, it is traditional for next year's host country to accept the IASL flag. The 2012 conference will be held in Qatar.

I'll write more about what I learned later on this week.