Professional Travel Grants for Graduate Students
Posts tagged Audrey Church
Conference Candor
10 years
From the gorgeous weather to learning at least six new digital resources, I thoroughly enjoyed the VAASL conference in Roanoke!
My attendance at the conference had many high points. My favorite session was Project CPR: Bringing Life into Your School. Presenter Catherine Rolfe walked us through how to have the students create Vokis, Wordles/Tagxedo word clouds, Animoto videos, and image editing tools such as Tuxpi. The latter was something that I had not even heard of before. The presenter also shared her own examples of products that she herself made with these websites. I know that our English teachers will find all of these resources useful once I share what I learned with them in my brief visits to their planning meetings.
I also attended a session entitled “Interesting Literature Lessons at the Heart of Technology.” The presenters provided some great examples of how librarians can incorporate technology into lessons focused on fiction works that are taught in middle school, such as Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. Our school is considering using this book next year for One School, One Book initiative, and I know our students will benefit from the project examples and templates they shared. I loved learning about how to use QR codes to create digital scavenger hunts where students use iPads to scan and answer questions!
From the gorgeous venue to the lovely, fall drive, the entire experience was wonderful! I have to say, my favorite moment, though, was listening to Dr. Church’s speech and seeing her grin in surprise when everyone raised their pink “Team Audrey” signs!! I have so enjoyed taking her super organized, informative classes, and so it was nice to see her relish this opportunity (and to get some recognition!)
VAASL 2014
10 years
One of the best conferences was Top Ten Topics and Trends given by our own Audrey Church, Ph.D. She covered
- Augmented Reality
- Digital Curation
- Evidence-Based Practice
- Genreflectin
- Library Reports
- Makerspaces
- Professional Developmet
- Project based Learning
- Research
- Web
She talked at 90 miles per hour and gave so much information that I wish I had gone to this session twice!
VAASL Conference
10 years
Laura Robinson & Mary Ivory
I’m so happy that I got to experience the VAASL Conference. What a wonderful opportunity for librarians to share with other librarians (and librarians to be)! I attended some really great sessions. First I went to a session presented by Lynne Farrell Stover called The Contemporary School Story: A New Nemesis Appears. I heard this presenter at Longwood over the summer when she shared her lessons on Unspoken by Henry Cole so I knew I would enjoy it. She went through a few books that are now incorporating story lines with testing and data. She handed out lesson plans to go along with the titles she shared. I will be able to do some of these lessons in my own class and I’ll share them with the librarian in my school.
I also attended a session presented by Elizabeth Kyser and Rebecca Schneeberger called Virginia Readers’ Choice – Primary. These two presenters went through the newest list of Virginia Readers’ Choice books and talked about how you can use them in your classroom or library. I learned that the books on this list are not necessarily new. I saw titles that I’ve been using in my classroom for years. Uh, why did I not know that?
Dee Griffith and Marsha Stewart presented a session on Making the 2014 Elementary Connection: What’s New in Children’s Literature. This session was fast paced with book talks on a lot of new books! I feel like since I’m not using different types of technology in the library yet, I wanted to go to sessions on books. This one was perfect! Oh… the wish list of books I want to purchase!
The next session I attended was presented by the one and only Audrey Church – Top Ten Topics and Trends for 2014. I had told myself that I wasn’t going to attend sessions by our professors because they would most likely share this information in our classes at some point. But when I saw the title of this one, I knew Audrey wouldn’t be sharing this in class. This was another fast paced presentation on topics such as augmented reality, digital curation, evidence-based practice, genrefication, library reports, Makerspaces, professional development, project-based learning, and research. Wow! I plan on purchasing a few augmented reality books for my classroom. My students will love them. I also want to learn more about digital curation so I’ll be reading some of the articles Audrey gave us.
On Friday I attended NonFicton StoryTime by Gwen Lantz and Margaret Alger. The pair went through non-fiction books and talked about how they used them in the classroom. I got excited about using non-fiction and learned how to read this type of text to engage kids. The story behind Biblioburro: A True Story from Columbia by Luis Soriano was amazing. He had a library on his donkey!
I went to a session presented by Susan Morris called Reading Together: Parent/Child Book Clubs. She explained how book clubs are a great way to bring kids and parents together to enjoy good books. She went through the steps on how to start a book club and which books she chooses and why. I probably took the most out of this session because it’s something I’m going to do as soon as I get back to school.
I went to a session presented by a very animated Allyson Watkins (I wish she was my teacher/librarian when I was little) called The Math-literature Connection in the Elementary Library. Not only did we learn about good titles to use with math, but also her story about why she had to do so much math in the library was very interesting.
By this point in the day I was happily on information overload and went to relax in my room. The keynote with Stephen Krashen was uplifting, dessert with David Baldacci was very entertaining, and dinner with Neal Shusterman was moving. How lucky for me to be able to experience all this in just a few days! I am so looking forward to the next time we all get together as librarians and learn from one another. Fabulous!
Alicia LeRoux @ VAASL November 2014
10 years
by
in School Librarianship
Alicia LeRoux, left
Leslie Swenson, right/vendor for Five Ponds Press
This was my first VAASL conference and I can sum it up in one word: WOW! It was great fun going to the conference with my library cohort buddy Jenny Larson. I learned a lot in all my sessions…favorites were the ones on technology, primary sources, and makerspaces. I can only wonder when the day will come when I will be able to use all my new ideas when I am hired as a librarian. I really enjoyed the dessert buffet with David Baldacci, and yes, library friends out there reading this, he really is the brother of the family who attends my church. When visiting the vendors, I ran into a former colleague of mine and previous Longwood School Librarian graduate student, Leslie Swenson. She now works for Five Ponds Press. In the picture, you will see me to the left, Leslie to the right, the display of Five Ponds Press in the background, and my finger to the far right. I need to practice my selfie technique! A big shout out to Frances Reeve, Audrey Church, and Karla Collins for a lovely reception with introductions by Audrey (amazing!) and the gift!! Thanks to the Longwood Travel Grant for supporting my conference adventure!
A Student’s Experience at the VAASL Annual Conference
10 years
I had such a wonderful time at the VAASL Annual Conference! This was the first school librarianship conference I’ve ever attended and I am so excited to come back next year!
Although I was only able to attend for one day, I got to experience all the best that the conference had to offer. I sat in on informative concurrent sessions hosted by some of the field’s best and brightest (AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning with Heather Moorefield-Lang, Making the 2014 Elementary Connection: What’s New in Children’s Literature with Dee Griffith and Marsha Stewart, and Top Ten Topics and Trends for 2014 with Audrey Church). I spent time and made memories with my peers from the Loudoun cohort, perused the vendor hall, met up with my former library mentor Dee Griffith (here’s a picture of us from when I was in high school), laughed and ate more than my share of delicious deserts at the reception with David Baldacci, and was duly impressed by the overwhelming support for Audrey Church’s candidacy from the over 140 Longwood University alumni on Thursday night.
Most importantly, I felt validated that school librarianship is exactly what I want to do and where I belong. I truly felt like a member of not just a community of librarians all working toward the same goal, but a family. Everyone was so welcoming to a librarian student like me and I couldn’t be more grateful for helping to making this an unforgettable experience. (:
Brittany Biesecker (School Librarianship Program – Longwood University)
VAASL Conference in Roanoke 2014
10 years
This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Virginia Association of School Librarians (VAASL) conference in Roanoke. Besides spending time with my colleagues from the Loudoun cohort of Longwood University, it was wonderful to meet so many librarians from around the state. There are multitude of great things happening in Virginia libraries! My favorite session was presented by the dynamic Heather Moorfield-Lang who compiles the VAASL “best of” website and apps lists every year. She presented several websites like haikudeck.com, pearltrees.com and thinglink.com. I am looking forward to sharing this information with my school and colleagues. The speakers were dynamic and invigorating, especially Kim Johnson and Neal Shusterman. Hands down, the highlight of the weekend was hearing Dr. Audrey Church introduce each of us at the Longwood Alumni gathering. Dr. Church makes all of us feel like we are the most important student to her, but to realize that there was a great network of librarians and future librarians in her fold made me feel like I am part of something special.
~Elizabeth Madigan