Updated 3/12/08 to add additional links and photo credits that I forgot.  Forgive me, it was late and I was in a hurry to get something posted! – Heather

Today marked the beginning of the 2009 SCASL annual conference in Greenville.  I am fortunate enough to have been allowed by my principal to attend,   Many of my fellow colleagues in the library world haven’t been as lucky.

Once again, I’ll be sharing my notes and thoughts from my experiences at conference.

I drove up to Greenville yesterday – after a side trip to Charlotte, NC.  I had to stop by the Apple Store to get a replacement battery for my Macbook.  Thankfully, it was covered under my warranty!  I couldn’t attend conference without my laptop!  But it sure made for a LONG trip – a little over 4 hours in total.  Anyway, here are the sessions I attended today:

Storytelling Through Pictures – Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Presented by Donna Goldsmith, Tim Van Heule, and Cathy Arnold – This pre-conference session was an all day experience beginning with a morning ride on the trolley to the Greenville Zoo.  We were met by a zoo guide who provided a very enjoyable and informational explanation of the animals: how they came to the zoo; their care and feeding; endangered species renewal plans; mated pare matching, etc.  Throughout the tour we were given the task of taking photographs to be used in our digital storytelling session in the afternoon.  In addition to my taking photos for the session, I also agreed to be a Roving Reporter for the SCASL IT Committee – I agreed to take photos and video interviews from our group to be shared with the folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  We are using the SCASL Ning to share information and live streaming of some sessions from conference.

After returning to the convention center and a boxed lunch, we met back up and were introduced to various storytelling tools.  See the presenters website for the tools they discussed: Flickr, Glogster, Photostory, etc.  After uploading our photos to Flickr, we were to use one of the tools they covered and create our own digital story of out trip.  Sorry, I don’t have one to share as I didn’t get to that part – I was too busy talking and going through others photos!  I kinda got sidetracked by all of the giraffe photos everyone took.  I love the giraffe.  I don’t know if you can see it in this photo, but the female giraffe is resting her head on the male giraffe’s back.  How sweet is that?  Another highlight of the giraffe segment of our trip was watching the little kids try to throw crackers to the giraffes – not an easy feat.  We learned that a zoo worker would go out later in the day and collect all of the crackers that didn’t make it to the giraffes and then feed them to the pair.  It was interesting, if someone sad, to see how the giraffes had to contort to reach the crackers on the ground.  

Can We Work Together?  Using Collaborative Tools

Presented by Cathy Nelson and Fran Bullington – As a member of the IT Committee, I assisted Cathy, Fran and Anne Lemieux with streaming the session using UstreamTV.  This was one of our efforts to include folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  I was in charge of the camera and chat room (once we figured it out!)  I am by no means an expert and I apologize for the poor camera work.

The session focused on using Wikis and Google Documents to collaborate with teachers and/or students to collaborate on group projects.  If/When I get the links to the session, I’ll update this post with them.

Reflections

While I truly enjoyed both sessions – the Zoo and the picture perfect, beautiful day were wonderful and I had fun working the camera for Cathy and Fran’s session – I must say the highlight of the day was having dinner with Cathy, Fran, Anne, and Doug Johnson! Fran took us to Flat Rock where I had a tasty meal and we shared fabulous conversations and laughs together.  I bet we were the highlight of our waiter’s evening!  Doug is a HOOT and a witty fellow!  I’m looking forward to attending one or two of his sessions, as well as his keynote, tomorrow.

Well, its getting late and the first session starts at 7:45 tomorrow morning and I want to make it there on time, so gonna hit the sack.

Photo Credit:

Greetings from SCASL 2.0: Experience the Journey @ your library.

DSC01317 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

DSC01315 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

More from Thursday:

I forgot to mention the fun I had last night at dinner with Cathy Nelson, Jessica Donaldson, Chris Craft and Fran Bullington at the Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery – after Chris made us walk all the way around Broadway at the Beach!  Not that I minded, too much, as I don’t believe I’ve ever visited there at night.  It was neat to see the lights and walk over the bridges.  And I got a kick out of watching Chris get so excited about feeding the fish.  Those were some HUGE fish – they were even biting the ducks!  Of course, I also teased him about the idea that you’re supposed to work OFF a meal, not work up to a meal!

From the “Encouraging Reading Through Technology” session I wanted to expand more on my notes regarding the “Senior Athletes Read” program.  The READ posters/trading cards are of only senior student athletes.  The posters are displayed around the school and at the games.  Their school has a specific block/period during the school day (4th block?) for athletic practice.  During this block, the coaches have made arrangements for the athletes to read to elementary classes.  The media specialists design the posters and trading cards and photograph the students.  The posters are printed on an HP Designjet printer and are laminated.  Other items I failed to mention include banners promoting reading are paraded during pep rallies “Win, Fight, Read” or something like that.  Another program was their book club – they read The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson and invited their local coroner to participate & talk about her job. Resources on their handout:

• Photostory
• Scholastic Video Booktalks
• Blogs
• CrazyTalk
• Turning PowerPoint slides into a screen saver

Friday:

I did decide to sleep in an extra hour!  So there were only two sessions I attended; however, both were excellent and ended EdTech on a high note.

Reaching Out Beyond the Walls: Distance Learning for Everyone – presented by John Woodring.  Despite some technical difficulties with the Internet access, this was an interesting session using Wiziq for distance training/meetings.  I’ve been toying with learning a system (preferably free) that we can use in our district media specialist association to provide access to our meetings/workshops for folks who can’t make it in person to our meetings.  Despite the technical difficulties, I found it interesting to chat with folks he’s been collaborating with.

Using Excel for More Than Spreadsheets! – presented by Donna Goldsmith from the SC Department of Education.  She showed examples of using Excel for interactivity in the classroom.  This session was awesome and Donna was a blast.  I so would have loved to have been in her classroom as a kid (or adult!)  Since she said her materials would be on the EdTech website, I didn’t take notes; however, as of right now they are not there.  I’ve emailed her for copies and would be happy to forward them on once I get them.

I will say the items she showed were real “wow” as well as “duh” moments for me.  For example: inserting a map of the US as the background (turning off the grid lines) then using comments to enter the state name/capitals (making sure to resize the columns and rows really small).  You could also put a picture of any diagram (cell structure, disection photo, etc.) of anything you want to label and use comments and/or create a matching type worksheet.  DUH! moment for me.

I didn’t stick around for the Luncheon.  Mom and I had a nice lunch at Margaritaville and did a little more shopping and walked around The Gay Dolphin before heading back to the condo.  You can see more of the photos my Mom snapped while we were in Myrtle Beach on my Flickr Photostream.

Saturday we had an early breakfast (well early for me since I don’t usually get up unil well after 10am if I’m on vacation or weekends) and checked out of the condo.  We stopped at the 501 Tanger outlets, had lunch, and headed on home.  Since we were passing by the Sumter Outlet mall, we just had to stop – boy is it NOT worth the stop.  There were only like 8 stores, but Mom could have stayed there and spent some money at the Antiques store.  We got home after dark and couldn’t bring outselves to empty out the car.  Spent all day Sunday unpacking and getting organized for today.  Since there was no food in the house we headed into Orangeburg to the IHOP!  Pecan Coffee Cake Pancakes, YUM! So, another fall vacation has come and gone.  Time to get back to work.

PS:  Oooh, reminder for everyone to plan for the Upstate Technology Conference: “Teach Tomorrow Today,” June 23 – 25, 2009.  The Call for Presentations is open.

Bill Gaskins over at Blogging on the Bay, who (or is it whom?) I had the opportunity to meet and chat with this past week at EdTech, has asked for photos of the view from your window.  Since I’ve been unpacking and organizing all the stuff I have to take back to school tomorrow, I haven’t had an opportunity to take a photo from home yet.  However, I have sent him the photo you see here of the beautiful sunset on our last night in Myrtle Beach, as seen from our condo balcony.  It was a lovely send off to an enjoyable vacation/conference week.  I have a few more scenic photos posted to my Flickr Photostream.

I still have more EdTech conference notes and vacation reflections to post, but those will have to wait for another day.  For now, let me just ask you to please take a moment to snap a picture of what you see from your window and email it (along with a brief description) to wcgaskins.59@gmail.com.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the phrase “Be Careful What You Wish For.”  Well, that’s is SOOO true for me.  Last school year was a particularly slow one for me in terms of work load.  I’d gotten into a rut routine with few surprises.  This year is totally different.  I’m swamped! – but happy.

So anyway, I’ve fallen behind on the SCASL 23 Things project (among other things).  This is my attempt to get caught up.

#1 – Learn about the program.

#2 – Go through the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners tutorial from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

#3 – Set up your own blog (or for advanced users an independent blog just for SCASL 23 Things).  I’m choosing to use my existing blog as I’ve got too many accounts open to keep track of one more.

#4 – Create an Avatar using Yahoo Avatars.  In case you didn’t notice, there is one over there on the right – you may have to scroll down a bit.  Boy did I “waste” an hour playing around with this one!  I was just as bad as some of my teens – trying out each outfit, background, bling, hairdos, etc.  While this is neat, I like Voki better, as you can record a message and the avatar moves.

#5 – Explore Flickr.  Create an account, upload photos of your library, and tag at least one SCASL2.0.  Boy was I surprised to find that there is already an hloy on Flickr!  Who isn’t me!  So, had to fall back on my other screen name and my flickr account is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hloy22/ for those of you who may want to go visit.  Right now, you’ll be disappointed as there is only one photo up!  Just give me time!  I used one of the Books wi/ Bite photos.

I use Flickr Creative Commons photos all the time, both in my blog and on my school website.  I think it is wonderful to be able to find (granted after a lot of paging through junk some times) photos that match what I’m trying to post.  Typically, I download the photo to my computer instead of using the image URL because my district blosk Flickr.  This way, I know my faculty will see what I’m inserting.

Okay, I’m still a few “Things” behind, but it’s time for me to hit the sack.  Lots to do tomorrow.  ‘Nite All!

PS: I hope some of you will take the time to work through the SCASL 23 Things with me.  While some of the items I’ve learned on my own and with the help of my online friends, I still learn something new with each activity.