Get Ready, Get Set, Present!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate the holiday. I spent the long weekend at church, but also with family for Easter dinner, and in front of the computer preparing for a few upcoming projects and events.

Some of these projects aren't new to me, like creating the school yearbook, designing workshops with one of my favourite co-presenters, Denise Colby (we appear at the TDSB Unleashing Learning conference tomorrow and the ETFO ICT Conference in June), reviewing presentation notes (I go to ECOO Owen Sound April 14) or planning for the annual MakerFestival Toronto extravaganza in July. Others are new approaches that are making me closely consider what it means to present.

TDSB Unleashing Learning, April 3, 2018

Maker Festival 2018, see www.makerfestival.ca

We want you! Fill out the interest form at http://makerfestival.ca/volunteer/

Driving north to share some thoughts and tips

I'm really excited about my new volunteer job with the Ontario Library Association, as the co-chair of the OSLA branch of the 2019 Super Conference. Alanna King is my experienced co-chair and I'm so happy to be a part of this experience with her. On Tuesday, March 27, all the volunteers involved with planning Super Conference met at the OLA headquarters to officially begin planning. Did I mention that the 2018 event was early February? It takes 11 months of behind-the-scenes work to make a conference of this size a success. The new theme has been chosen ("For the People") and today, the call for proposals link went live. (Consider presenting! Go to https://www.olasuperconference.ca/attend/submit-session-proposal/ ). What I really enjoyed during the launch meeting was the destruction of "silo thinking". Alanna and I were busy networking and chatting with the other library sectors and their representatives throughout the day. Even though some of our concerns and needs are exclusive to the school setting, there are many more commonalities than you'd expect. There were a lot of tasks we undertook that helped us to gel as a group and I think this will be a rewarding process and end product for all involved.

The only downside to being on the Super Conference planning team is that I will have no time to present at the conference itself. Thankfully, there are several other conferences that I can apply to - and one of them will be quite different. As described on https://mrcssharesease.wordpress.com/m-a-d-p-d/ MADPD:

is a virtual “unconference” with one goal to make a difference for the greater education community. On May 6, 2018 over 100 educators from across the globe will share one idea that makes a difference in their classrooms! YOU can attend the conference, virtually, FREE, from the comfort of your home

Peter Cameron invited me to submit a proposal and I made the commitment. This is going to be a big departure from my usual kind of talk. It's using YouTube Live and I'll need to do some set-up in advance. Promotions will be done through FlipGrid, which I'm familiar with thanks to some teacher karaoke challenges. I will also need to get permission from my students to show some of their work. It sounds like a lot of fun, and with 100 people presenting over a 12 hour period, there should be something there for everyone! I won't have the same sort of feedback loop that I often get when being in the room physically with others, but I'll try and channel my experiences doing webinars into this event. I hope to see some of my friends at one or more of these conferences. See you there!