Cassie Koinzan

October 11, 2017

TE 875

Professional Development Conference Report

On Wednesday, October 11, 2017 I attended an online conference called
“Library 2.0” and an online webinar called “Common Sense Media and Digital
Citizenship”.
Library 2.0 Digital Conference:
“Library 2.0” was a digital Library conference put on through San Jose State
University. There were attendees from all over the world. This conference was relevant
to the school library because the entire conference focused on creating a makerspace
in libraries. Makerspaces are a location where students (and adults) can collaborate,
come together, and craft/ make things. Heather Moorefield-Lang, the closing keynote
speaker, explained that “librarians with makerspaces can create new partnerships
and collaborative efforts in and with their communities, offering further services
and methods to meet patron needs. It is a unique learning environment for all
different patrons and populations.”
The first breakout session I attended was “Making a Difference” by Kristina
Holzweiss. She was awarded the 2015 school librarian of the year from the
School Librarian Journal. Holzweiss had so many great suggestions and ideas! I
would love to have the opportunity to visit her library and be able to see her
makerspace in person, if only she wasn’t in Long Island, New York. She sounds
like such a fun, hands on librarian! One of my favorite suggestions she had for a
makerspace was a kindness cart where kids could make things for other people in
need. They could make kindness rocks, decorate cards for a local nursing home,
make dog toys out of old t-shirts for local animal shelters, or decorate a postcard
for sick children through Sendingsmiles2sis. Another one of my favorite
suggestions was writing letters for Macy’s Make a Wish Letter Writing Campaign.
Every letter that is written, Macy’s will donate $1.00 to Make a Wish Foundation.
Students could write a letter to Santa or even write a letter with their hopes and
wishes for the world.
The next session I attended was “Hosting Maker Days: Forging
collaborative partnerships in anticipation of an academic library makerspace” by
Jessica McClean and Tara Smith. This session was live, but you could tell the
women just read from a script which wasn’t very interactive. McClean and Smith
discussed a “Maker Day Event” that was held at Texas State University. This was
a day where kids could drop in throughout the day and complete different crafts.
They had a technology, yarn, beads, mixed media, and painting stations. They
advertised the event as a stress relief for students during finals week. I think this
would be a fun event, however, they did explain that a team of 32 librarians at
Texas State University put this event on. This would not work at my small school,
however, I was thinking the public library and maybe even some of the small
surrounding schools could get together and have a community or county maker
day event. It would be challenging to determine what town the maker day event
would be held, but maybe it could be a yearly rotating event.
Then I attended “Low Cost Tools to Bring Making into your library” by
Robert Pronovost. Pronovost had a lot of recommendations involving cardboard.
You can get zip-snip kits or make-do kits to help your students create a number of
exceptional thing through only cardboard. Students can make green screens,
puppet shows, houses, display boards, and so much more. A great resource he
mentioned to check out is “Caine’s Arcade” online. He is a 9 year old kid who
makes an arcade completely out of cardboard. Through this website you could
join a Global Cardboard Challenge to foster the kid’s creativity worldwide. How
fun for the kids to be in a challenge with children in 80 different countries around
the world!
My overall impression of the sessions is that they were mediocre. I have
attended a number of really great conferences and this one fell short in a number
of areas. The sessions were not very user-friendly and opened a ton of browsers,
they would not let you preregister, and the directions were not very good. One
thing that was rather frustrating with this conference is they did not have enough
space for everyone to attend the keynote speaker. I signed on to the keynote
speaker, but it then kicked me out. Once I signed back on it was already full and
they had a link for an overflow section where you could watch it live.
Unfortunately, the overflow did not work properly, breaking in and out and I had to
constantly refresh my browser. I registered months ago for this conference which
I thought would have held my spot in the session. I joined my first breakout
session early, where I found many frustrated people who had the same
experience I had.
It was really neat to be able to network with people from all over the world!
There were librarians from Alabama, Argentina, New York, Canada, Bogota
Columbia, Maryland, and New Jersey (just to name a few). There were school
librarians, public librarians, and academic librarians. After taking a survey, most
were public librarians. While presenters were sharing, people would share some
of their great ideas in the classroom conversation. A neat comment someone
made is “a makerspace= recycle space”.
I think our Elementary Student Council could do so many great things with
a makerspace. I would like to reach out to my school librarian and see if she
would be willing to partner up with myself and our Elementary Student Council to
create a makerspace or maybe even a maker event. I think my favorite idea to
hopefully implement is Kristina Holzweiss idea of a kindness cart. I think a
marker-cart would be a great start for my small school rather than a n entire
makerspace.

Common Sense Media and Digital Citizenship:

“Common Sense Media and Digital Citizenship” was a Wednesday Webinar put
on by my local ESU digital coordinator, Molly Aschoff. This webinar was relevant to the
school library because digital citizenship is vital to teach in order to meet the American
Association of School Librarians Standards for the 21st Century Learner.
 1.3.1 Respect copyright/ intellectual property rights of creators and
producers.
 1.3.3 Follow ethical and legal guidelines in gathering and using
information.
 1.3.5 Use information technology responsibly.
 3.1.6 Use information and technology ethically and responsibly.
 3.3.1 Solicit and respect diverse perspectives while searching for
information, collaborating with others, and participating as a member of
the community.
 4.1.7 Use social networks and information tools to gather and share
information.
 4.3.4 Practice safe and ethical behaviors in personal electronic
communication and interaction.
During this webinar, we took a closer look at the available resources on
CommonSenseMedia.org. There is an educator link that has a section all about K-12
digital resources, including lesson plans, activities, and games. A huge plus about this
website is all of it is free! There are eight subcategories to choose from, including
“Internet safety”, “Cyberbullying”, “Relationships & communication”, “Information
Literacy”, and “Creative Credit & Copyright”. Under the scope and sequence there is a
section called “Libraries” that has a lesson just for library media specialists. The lessons
include check for learning (assessments), activities, and some include videos as well. I
loved the videos and think my students would really enjoy them too.
I am really glad I took part in this Wednesday Webinar. Molly did a great job
showing a variety of resources to meet the needs of all the people participating in this
webinar. She even had a few interactive surveys that she did throughout the
presentation. There were librarians, teachers, and administrators who participated in
this webinar and there was a side conversation box that allowed us to communicate
with each other and Molly during the presentation.
I will definitely be implementing some of this lesson with my third graders this
year. I also emailed the website to my school librarian, co-teachers, and guidance
counselor, as I feel all of them could incorporate these lesson and activities in their
curriculum as well! Something I really loved was the “digital passport”, which a LMS or
teacher can upload a class and the students will individually watch videos, answer
questions, and play games to earn badges to receive their digital passport. I think my
kids will love this! As a teacher, you can see which badges each kid earns and manage
their progress. I’m excited to implement this during our daily tech time.