This conference I’m sure will be full of new things we can do to expand our use of Destiny, but the program looks to go beyond that.  I have no doubt I’ll be coming back with ideas on how to make my library program even better!

I’ll be sharing a session called Curriculum, Collaboration and Library Connections.  We’ll be talking about our library branch – The Leveled Library!  Looking forward to sharing what we’ve accomplished at my school, but even more excited to see what I can learn from everyone else!

As with all conferences, my favorite part is going to be the people.  I know several good friends that are coming and I am soooo looking forwarding to spending time catching up.  I’m also looking forward to meeting new friends.  The conversations with old friends and new will make the conference experience even richer.

It’s going to be a great couple of days in the windy city this week!  I can hardly wait to get there!  If you aren’t able to make it to Chicago, check out the conference buzz or search the hashtag #fsc11 in Twitter.

I’ve also come away learning just as much as if I had traveled to a convention center or hotel.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I still love to travel and attend conferences for that face to face connection.  But, webinars certainly have their place, too.

Paul from P21 sent this note last night:

“I’ve already posted a discussion thread on the Cyber Summit (http://www.weareteachers.com/community/p21-cyber-summit) with your webinar title, so please feel free to post additional ideas, questions for discussion or links there for the community—As I said, we hope the conversation continues beyond the temporal confines of the 60 minute webinar. In that discussion post, you’ll find a PDF of your slides as well as a link to the online recording of your webinar.”

The new adventure last night was that I was one of three co-presenters for the webinar.  I’d always been on the receiving end and so it was quite a switch to be on the other side of the slides.   I will have to give a great shout out to Paul with the P21 folks.  He made sure the technology worked and was pretty easy to use.  He walked us through every step of the way and his help was invaluable.  My co-presenter, Melissa Johnston who is a Doctoral Student from Florida State University and Vince Barnes (my principal).  The time went fast as did my voice (I talk REALLY fast when I’m nervous sometimes).   I think we helped provide a little clearer picture of what P21 Skills look like at the elementary school age.

Our webinar was part of the P21 Cyber Summit this week.  Each day for the last couple of weeks P21 had anywhere from two to three webinars going on.  I know I was most honored for them to invite me to be a part of this.  I’m also glad that they archived all of these webinars because I wasn’t able to attend very many.  It will be good to go back and listen to some that I missed.

Here is an opportunity for some free professional development.  The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills (of which AASL is a member) is  hosting a series of webinars.  The Cyber Summit on 21st Century Readiness begins in late September and runs through early October.  There are a variety of topics and presenters at various times during the day and evening.  I’m most honored to have the opportunity to co-present one of the webinars with Melissa Johnston who is working on her PhD at Florida State University and my fabulous principal Vince Barnes.  We’re working now on our presentations.  Melissa and I have had some great Skype conversations and we’re excited to be talking about 21st Century Skills and elementary schools and elementary school libraries.  This is our first webinar presentation, but we’re up for a new adventure.  It should be a great time!  Fellow Hoosier, Leslie Preddy, is also presenting talking about Middle Schools and 21st Century Skills.  I’m sure her session is going to be amazing!   All of the webinar look like they will be filled with great content.  Now just have to see which ones I can fit into my schedule!

When I got home today, there was a box sitting on the front porch.  And, after opening it I knew it was one of those times you want to share the exciting thing I found.  So, since we’re on break from school, it seemed the blog might be a perfect place.   I was so excited because inside the box were copies of my brand new book – The 21^st Century Elementary Library Media Program.   The book is published by Linworth Publishing, which is part of the ABC-CLIO family.  While I’ve spent a year or more working on it and seen its many various drafts, it was so exciting to see the final product in print.  Hopefully you’ll indulge me taking a few minutes to celebrate!!!  Opening that box and seeing my own work come to fruition was exciting.

Sometimes it is interesting to think back about how a project like this starts off in the first place.  I certainly would have never guessed when I started out in this field that I’d be writing a book – let alone this being my third one.  But, I believe strongly in taking advantages of opportunities.  When I was student teaching, my supervising teacher and I worked on a project that she thought would be perfect for an article.  She encouraged me to write it up, and to my surprise School Library Media Activities Monthly (now School Library Monthly) agreed to publish it in the fall of 1998.   I never realized that many journals take submissions from practitioners.   So over the next few years, I continued to turn in articles based on things happening in our library media center.  I sent things to a variety of magazines – sometimes getting published and sometimes not.  I found the writing to be a great way to reflect on what we did in the library media center.  After a while a few fabulous friends of mine (Marge Cox and Susan Page) got together and decided to try our hand at writing a book.  Each of us had a unique perspective and it was our combined efforts and talents that kept us moving forward until the project was complete – The LMS in the Writing Process (Linworth, 2007).   Following that I thought maybe I could tackle the next book on my own.  While it was much harder to keep to deadlines without my co-writers pushing me along, eventually it came together and the book was published — No School Library Left Behind (Linworth, 2008).  Now that I kind of had an understanding about the process, I started on another book and today that process can to an end with the final copies that arrived today – The 21^st Century Elementary Library Media Program (Linworth, 2010).  I keep writing articles and I’m sure at some point may tackle another book.  All along the way there have been amazing editors and publishing folks to help guide me along each and every step.

The thing that I always think about is that this could have happen to anyone.  There are amazing things happening in school libraries all over.  Taking a little time to reflect about them and write them down can lead to a published piece to share with others.  We as a profession tend to be too shy in letting others know the great things going on in school libraries.  We should take advantage of any opportunity to share.  Writing about the things that happen in our libraries is very reflective and can often lead us to think about why we do things the way we do – and make them even better.  Journals often are looking for great ideas that they can print.  Check out their submission guidelines in their journals or online.  Besides a published piece, one might also consider a blog or other online format for sharing.  There are many new avenues one can take advantage of to share.  Every time I take a few minutes to catch up on the journals I always post to our state listserv about the people from our state who are showing up in the journals.  These folks need to be recognized for their efforts, but also I hope it encourage others to follow their lead.  So as you think about what you might do in 2010, think about taking time to write an article or blog posting.  You never know when something little might lead into something bigger down the road – like a package on your own front porch!