IASL School Library Happenings Worldwide is moving to join lots of other IASL happenings and events. You will find us at the IASL Meeting Place. The idea is to have a central location for sharing and discussing IASL happenings, events and ideas. Please join us at the IASL Meeting Place.
Within a few weeks this blog will be closed down
The award winners for the IASL Awards program were notified of their success early in the month of June. A number of the winners will be attending the IASL 2008 Annual Conference and will receive their award benefits at the Awards Ceremony.
Media releases have been prepared for each award and the information is now available on the IASL website.
Eunice McKenzie (Jamaica) - Jean Lowrie Leadership Development Award
Jerry Mathema (Zimbabwe) - Ken Haycock Leadership Development Award
Dr Marcia A Mardis (USA) - Murofushi Research Grant
Madhu Bhargave (India) - IASL/Softlink International Excellence Award
ASLA Online Virtual Conferences: Australian School Library Association (Australia)
- LinksPlus Commendation Award
iBrary: Ray Doiron, University of Prince Edward Island and Marlene Asselin, University of British Columbia (Canada) - IASL School Library Technology Innovation Award
Books for Children Program - Kenya School Library Association (Kenya); St Joseph’s Primary School (Swaiziland) and Tipu Model School & College Kabal Swat (Pakistan)
Congratulations to all award winners.
In March 2003 the network ENSIL was founded in Amsterdam by twelve people from eight different European countries. Now, in June 2008, the network has almost 80 members in 21 European countries.
Lourense Das, the co-ordinator and chair, has advised ENSIL was formalised into a foundation. “This foundation, which is based in the Netherlands, has now been legally formalised and will be known as the ENSIL Foundation (Stichting ENSIL).”
The new ENSIL Foundation (Stichting ENSIL) has made the following statement about its goals: “Based on international research which shows that the quality of students’ learning outcomes is greatly enhanced by effective school libraries, ENSIL promotes the basic principle that all pupils in schools in each country of Europe are entitled to quality school libraries/media centres and services run by professional and accredited school librarians/information specialists.”
More information about ENSIL Foundation (Stichting ENSIL) can be found on the website http://www.ensil.eu
The ASLA Online III Virtual Conference to be held in May 2008 will focus on three strands:
Register now for the ASLA Online III Virtual Conference — Under Construction: A World without Walls
The theme for the ASLA Online III virtual conference was inspired by the work of Thomas L. Friedman (2006), The world is flat. The flattening of the world, according to Friedman, was triggered by ten forces - 11/9/89 (fall of the Berlin Wall), 8/9/95 (Netscape goes public), work flow software, uploading, outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, in-forming and the steroids (Friedman 2006, pp. 50-200).
The focus for this conference emphasises the evolution of technology and the implications of rapid and significant change on the education agenda.
Each strand will host a lead paper and be supported by a number of general papers around the sub-theme of each strand. The papers will be available to registered delegates during April to allow participants to read, reflect and prepare for the discussions with presenters in the virtual forums in May.
The digital environments strand lead paper by Raylee Elliott Burns looks at a recombinant architecture approach to the design of learning spaces whereby familiar architectural forms and functions are transformed by the digital-online modes. Who and what is valued is an influential aspect of the learning space designing process. Anne Gillespie, James Herring, Pru Mitchell, Judy O´Connell, and Belinda Spry & Sarah Hayman present supporting papers that cover the provision of online environments for school libraries, the changing role of the teacher librarian, e-portfolios and professional learning environments, the effective use of blogs as professional learning tools, and Library 2.0 and collection development policy and
procedure.
Katina Zammit from the University of Western Sydney, Australia provides the lead paper for the digital literacy strand. Katina explores the concept of digital literacy within new modes of learning using new mediums and technology. The accompanying papers by staff from the Queensland Library Cyberschool and Julie Mabb provide different perspectives on literacy skills and learning environments, whilst Pat Pledger explores the literature blogosphere. Margaret Meijers encourages the use of video games to develop literacy skills.
Web 2.0 and information fluency by the lead presenter for the digital pedagogy strand, Joyce Valenza from Springfield Township High School in the USA, challenges us to consider how the information skills used in traditional information structures are merged with the skill set required to survive in the new information landscape. Valenza also includes reference to the Web 2.0 tools that students use to foster information fluency development. Gary Green´s paper within this strand continues the focus on how technology can be utilised by teacher librarians in the library and classroom to improve learning outcomes. Stuart King targets
YouTube as a useful tool to develop media literacy skills as well as relevant learning experiences. Barbara Combes presents initial findings of her research into the information seeking behaviour of the Net Generation and John Raiti explores the cultural changes schools will face and the role teacher librarians will play in the new technologies arena.
This year a social networking space has been established …..join in and invite your friends to the ASLA Online social networking pre-conference space for even more lively discussion.
The SlamIT course 2008 will be of interest to European colleagues — Lifelong Learning - School libraries and regional education centres supporting learning in the community. The location is Lithuania and the dates are 19 to 24th October 2008.
This course builds on the SLAM and GrandSLAM projects.
For nine years the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) celebrated International School Library Day (ISLD). ISLD has just got a whole lot bigger. It has grown into International School Library Month (ISLM).
This change was approved by the IASL Board in order to accommodate the many ways that school library personnel were celebrating ISLD. It was decided that each country, province, state and even school can choose their own specific day, week or even the whole month of October to celebrate school libraries.
In the coming months the International School Library Month (ISLM) section of the IASL web site will be updated to reflect the change.
Rick Mulholland, ISLM coordinator, has announced that the ISLM Committee has chosen Literacy and Learning at your School Library as the 2008 ILSM theme.
If you are struggling to get your head around the ‘how 2 of web 2′ then take a look at the Californian School Library Association’s blog - School Library Learning 2.0. CSLA is focusing on the 23 things one can learn, so there are 23 activities that you can do to begin to understand RSS feed, blogs, wikis, image and video sharing, digital collection sharing and more.
The California School Library Association (CSLA) has advised that the publication, Standards and guidelines for strong school libraries, is now out-of-print and out-of-stock. But, a great new year gift from the CSLA is the publication is now available for free from the CSLA website.
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has recently released the results of the first longitudinal survey, School Libraries Count!
The survey, conducted in early 2007, gathered data in a number of areas, such as library staff, collections, technology, class visits, and budgets. AASL will be using the data to develop tools to help library media specialists advocate at the local, state and national level.
I’m sure the data will assist in the effective lobbying for the Strengthening Kids Interest in Learning & Libraries (SKILLS) Act.
