First Day at First MAME -- Ups and Downs

This is my first MAME conference. Like Cheryl, I'm a student in school media and suppose I'm close enough now to graduation and have learned enough that it's time to learn some more from the professionals as well as the academics (no offense intended here.) I admit to having mixed feelings after my first day. I think there is great promise in this field, but I am concerned that opportunity will pass the profession by and we will be left with few or no positions and little or no influence over what we hold to be important.

So, the ups --
1. They keynote address by Gary Hartzell was certainly entertaining and a great way to start the morning. His talk, "The Connected Librarian: Why Would Someone Want to Collaborate with You?" emphasized the important values/characteristics that one who wants to be collaborated with needs to have. This reminded me of Marcia's talk in my University of Michigan School of Information class, where we discussed what we needed to do to attract the other "species" meaning the classroom teacher (my words, not hers). Gary included some don'ts in his talk, like don't collaborate with the so-so teacher just to make him/her look better.
2. My first breakoutgroup session, on booktalks. Joanne Steckling, from my kids' school district, led this discussion and had some great ideas and shortcuts on how to run booktalks. The emphasis here seemed to be more on our job to encourage literacy -- we seem to focus a lot, especially as the kids get older, on information literacy. She didn't say information literacy wasn't important, just wanted to value encouraging kids and reading, especially at the middle school age, which she viewed as one of the last chances to get them into reading.
3. I met a lot of interesting people, and ran into some old friends, who have encouraged me along this path with volunteer opportunities and guidance.
4. The Your-LearnPort/net Trekker session was good -- on how to use their page's application to help with differentiated instruction. Unfortunately, to use their stuff anywhere but on your own/teacher/media specialist's computer (combined with a projector to demonstrate to kids) you have to pay for a subscription. It had lots of cool applications, which I can hopefully explore a bit more.

Okay, now the downs:
1. I met a nice high school librarian while waiting in line to pick up a free book giveaway. She had lots of nice things to say about her job and the field in general, but said the most discouraging thing: "Gee, I hope there are jobs for you when you finish your program." I hope so too.
2. I went to the middle school shop talk session, initally focused on collaboration. When the moderator first asked if people had examples of collaboration, there were a few contributors, but most seemed to say they did it on the fly and didn't have examples to share. The session moved from a productive discussion to one where people were expressing dissatisfaction with their jobs, schools, administrators, etc. I wish it could have been more productive, with the moderator noting some specific areas of concern and then asking for suggestions from the audience. Some members had some great ideas -- others definitely sounded very frustrated. Hearsay says the elementary school session was pretty similar.

I find I'm on a learning curve again -- new expressions, words, ideas to learn. Sometimes in sessions I'm a bit confused, but try to keep up with notes, hoping it will all gel together in the end (or someday).

Until tomorrow,