Thursday, December 10, 2009

Authors, Authors, Authors

One thing about the ISLMA conference you will see and hear from many authors. You will hear authors not only at the author breakfasts but in sessions. I attended the Author Awards Breakfast and heard Ellen Hopkins author of Crank the winner of the 2009 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book award and Kevin O’Malley the 2009 Monarch Award winning author for Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude. They were interesting and spoke from very different perspectives. This is to be expected as one wrote an edgy teen novel and the other a picture book. However, both had words of wisdom for librarians.

Another session I attended was titled “First Books, An Inside Look: Debut Teen Lit Authors Discuss Why They Write About Severed Arms, Missing Parents, Drugs, Sex, and Talking Cockroaches.” With a title like that how could you resist? The authors were Cynthea Liu, Daniel Kraus, Susan Fine, and James Kennedy. Each spoke of how they started their writing career and what inspires them to write the stories they do. It is reassuring to know that there are young authors out there writing books, different types of books for the teens of today.

Friday, December 4, 2009

AASL Standards

I knew that new standards had been released by AASL but I had not studied them closely. Ann M. Martin presented a session on the “Standards for the 21st-Centruy Learner” There are four areas under which they have identified Skills, Dispositions in Action, Responsibilities, and Self-Assessment Strategies for students to use for each standard.

The four standard areas are:
  1. Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge.
  2. Draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge.
  3. Share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society.
  4. Pursue personal and aesthetic growth.

If you want to learn more the entire standards document can be downloaded.

Library Education Alive in Illinois

This year there were five alumni receptions at the ISLMA Conference.
  • Illinois State University that as begun a school library certification program
  • University of Illinois with their Graduate School of Library and Information Science
  • Dominican University with its MLS program
  • Northern Illinois University has a program to obtain the Library Information Specialist Certificate
  • National-Louis University that has started a program towards certification

Looking for classes and certification? Check out these universities.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

GLBT Literature

Finding just the book for teens, especially those that are dealing with gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender issues is often difficult. Michael Cart and Christine Jenkins presented an overview of titles that include these issues in them. They reviewed books from 1999 through 2009. Many titles on their list were not discussed. There were so many to cover in just one hour and the list contained over 2000 books.

The trend in books is that the main character is male by a 2 to 1 margin, usual, white, middle class and dealing with issues of coming out. In their discussion they pointed out the books where this was generally not the norm. If looking for a list of books look at the Rainbow List from ALA. It is an annual reading list of books for beginning readers through 12th grade that validate same-gender lifestyles, including portraying GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or questioning) characters in a realistic and prominent manner.

While this is a subject difficult for some of us to deal with we need to be award of what is in the literature so that we can guide students to the most appropriate and best that is out there on a topic.

WIU and Technology

Western Illinois University provides professional Development online and onsite in several areas of Technology; from Smart Boards to Podcasting, Microsoft Office Suite to Internet Safety. They have many classes to choose from and at affordable prices.

Summer 2010 you can join them at Camp Tech-a-nada where you can learn to use the most current technology tools for student learning. The exact dates are Aug. 3-4, 2010. You can learn 9 CPDU’s from 16 different sessions.

Want more information check out their website.