Friday, February 2, 2007

Thursday at the OLA

I meant to post during the day on Thursday but the technology gods were against me, and I couldn't connect. (Oh ye fickle Fates!) Guess one of my "solutions" for this "changing landscape" is a live (as in warm body sitting right next to me) blog tutor!

Thursday was amazing! You'd think if you were at a place from 8:30 'til after 7 that you'd have enough time to do everything ... ha! I barely had time for lunch and did not do justice to the Expo floor! Thankfully the vendors were very understanding as I ran through grabbing books and throwing my P-card at them with a "I'll be back in 2 minutes!" holler in their direction.

In brief (because I'm at work right now - yep, a brief sojourn back to work and then returning to SuperCon on Saturday)

- attended "Being The Change" (#317) ... it's incredible what one person can do, and super-incredible what a bunch of people can do! Gwen, Amy, Sybille and Heather mentioned how being involved in this practice altered their teaching practices and listeners could tell they were very excited about what was going on in their schools. They all sounded grateful to Peggy for bringing them on board and it made me think about all those people who have pulled me into things that really enriched my professional and personal development.

- went to "Inclusive Collections @ Your Library" (#414) ... hard to believe it was Michelle and Linda's first time presenting at OLA - you ladies did great. The handouts were plentiful and useful. There were lots of great titles mentioned.

- the Plenery session with Tomi from Yahoo! was very interesting. I should save a separate blog entry for all the reflections that stemmed from that.

- Carol and Sandi gave me more of what I want and expect from them - concrete strategies ready-to-go that improve student achievement from their session (#623) "Questioning Success". It's hard to keep your audience attentive and motivated at 4:00 but they did it, with neat activities that couldn't help but draw you in.

- The Awards Ceremony was great and I was very proud of myself - I was able to stop talking and listen to the speeches. That sounds like just common manners but if you haven't been to one of the OSLA Awards ceremonies, you have to note that there are a few things conspiring against true attentive listening ...
> the lighting (dark and subdued)
> the time of day (5:15 p.m.)
> the drinks (free, thanks to Saunders Book Co.)
> the yummy snacks (mmmmm, chicken kabobs!)
> the room set up (lots of little corners to hide in to yak)
> the company (I saw people I hadn't seen in a long time and wanted to catch up with them)
> did I mention the drinks? ;->
Anyway, I found this year's crowd to be pretty respectful with just a few "shhhhs" to remind them, and congratulations to the winners.

Okay, a class is about to come back to the library ... better get going!

1 comment:

Anita Brooks Kirkland said...

We all had a great time at the awards reception again this year, and we were very proud to honour this year's recipients:
Teacher-librarian of the Year: Hetty Smeathers, York Catholic DSB
Award for Special Achievement: Marilyn Kogon

More information on the award recipients will be published in an upcoming issue of Access.

A great big thanks to OSLA Council member Sharon Armstrong for organizing this event!