Tag Archives: MEMO Conference

School Media Specialist

MEMO Early Bird Registration Deadline Extended!

Register for the MEMO Conference by September 25th (even if your school can’t send a check until a bit later) to take advantage of this great early bird deal!

Join us on October 12 & 13 to hear Kathy Schrock, Gail Lovely, Shannon McClintock Miller, Mary Amato – not to mention many of our own local talented folks! Learn, network with friends and colleagues, and have some fun to start the school year off right! You can also add the MEMO Pre-conference on October 11 for only $50!

Details and registration are available at http://memotech.ning.com/page/2012-fall-conference

Questions? Contact MEMO at admin@memoweb.org.

School Media Specialist

2012 MEMO Fall Conference Registration

ATTENTION ALL SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALISTS, TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATIONISTS, AND TECHNOLOGY COORDINATORS!!!!

Back to school and tired already? Trying to get the spring back in your step? The 2012 MEMO Fall Conference can fix that. Don’t delay, register today!

 

Leading Change: MEMO 2012 Fall Conference

October 11-13, 2012

River’s Edge Conference Center and Kelly Inn

St. Cloud, Minnesota

Register: http://www.tfaforms.com/239647

  (Register by September 15th for a special early-bird rate!)

Conference Schedules: http://memotech.ning.com/page/2012-fall-conference

Don’t forget to reserve a room at the Kelly Inn!
They have a block of rooms for the MEMO conference for $99 each night.
Free parking, free wireless Internet.

100 4th Avenue South • St. Cloud, Minnesota 56301
Phone: (320) 253-0606
Directions: http://www.bestwesternstcloud.com/location.php

 

What you will get:

Keynote Speakers – Not just ONE but THREE! (1 + 1 + 1 = 3!!!)

 

Kathy Schrock                                                      

Shannon Miller                                                                   

Gail Lovely        

AND…

Special Guest Author Mary Amato

WITH… over 50 sessions on topics like:

Flipped Classroom

Demystifying Digital Publishing

Google Literature Trips

ELM Mobile

iPads

Using Infographics

AND don’t forget there is a special one day preconference event: Tap Into Technology –  with strands for technology coordinators and administrators, integrationists, and technology support specialists.

Image

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Evaluating Educational Apps

By billsoPHOTO
http://tinyurl.com/c5ar6dd

Have you ever wondered if you should be evaluating apps before you begin using them with your students? The question is certainly valid, and one that others in the field have been pondering as well. Independent Consultant, Tony Vincent, author of the Learning in Hand blog and former teacher, recently wrote a blog post on this very topic http://tinyurl.com/72gnytk. Here, Vincent provides an app evaluation rubric and explains that others before him asked the same question – he provides a bibliography of sorts for app evaluation. Vincent credits Harry Walker, Doctoral student from Johns Hopkins University, for first developing an app evaluation rubric and Media Specialist, Kathy Schrock (a MEMO Conference Keynote Speaker!), for later adapting and editing the rubric.

So, what are some key pieces of information to keep in mind when evaluating apps? First, is the app relevant and does it instill or reinforce what your students need to know? Is the content appropriate for the age group? Are there advertisements – and how easy is it to accidently click on an advertisement? Can the app’s settings by customized to vary according to the individual’s or learning cohort’s needs? Has the app been updated recently? Does it promote collaboration and critical thinking? These are just a few questions to consider asking when evaluating an app.

What are some things you and your teachers consider while evaluating apps? Do you evaluate them, or do you tend to choose what is used based upon recommendations, what you can find through a basic search through the iTunes store, by price, or by teacher requests?

This topic is one CMLE staff is currently stewing on, and hopes to possibly explore further in the future. Media specialists and librarians are masters at evaluation and at creating and utilizing rubrics effectively. As such, this could be an important new role for media specialists working with teachers, as well as for librarians in a number of other settings. It is our role to inform others on how to ask the important questions about the resources we’re using – why should apps be any different? Be on the lookout for more on this topic from CMLE in the near future! Hopefully you’re excited to explore it with us too!

General, School Media Specialist

MEMO Conference Summary: A CMLE Scholarship

The following was submitted by a CMLE Scholarship recipient.

Submitted by: Wanda Erickson, Upsala Area Schools K-12 Librarian

6:30 a.m. came much too early for this night person!  Two mornings in a row I grumbled out of bed to meet my ride (Deb Disher, Holdingford’s master Media Specialist) and beat the sun into St. Cloud.  You will all laugh with me as I jerked awake Friday morning at 6:20, my alarm set for 7, because Deb was to arrive at 7.  Some have a reading dyslexia; I have a math dyslexia.

But I try not to miss the MEMO Fall Conference and especially appreciate the multi-year contract in St. Cloud as it means I can attend more easily.  Thursday evening’s vendor reception allows me to scout out the vendor area, talk to the various sales reps and begin to place my name in drawing bins.  (Whom do I talk to about not winning anything this year?)

Buffy Hamilton, Cathy Jo Nelson and Marcia Thornton Jones jogged ideas through my brain.  Participatory librarianship = a BIGGER vision!  PR will not make you relevant; YOUR vision for how the library can contribute does!  Develop 23 Things On a Stick for students and call it 5 Things In Our Pockets (put jeans pockets or old card pockets on a bulletin board-kids collect laminated activity cards when they complete each task-master Flip video camera, layout a poster, read an ebook, teach another student to request a title).

Assisting Joan Larson at the book tables in the past has whetted my appetite for more.  This year I volunteered to help with the author visits and the book tables.  What a wonderful time!  I gathered information from the authors to disseminate to my public library staff, who invest Legacy funds in author and illustrator visits.

I am a Boomer librarian who is not transitioning easily to life in the cloud.  I ponder the definition of library.  Where do my libraries live and just exactly when did they transform because I missed it?  Can a Skyped author visit really encompass the same energy as a F2F visit?  Seeing Pat Bauer and Dave Geister in full costume cannot be reproduced.  And, perhaps, there is no substitute for ‘real’ experiences.  After all, I learned one can storyboard very effectively with post-it notes on a laminated piece of cardboard.

General, Public, School Media Specialist

Top Ten Things I Took Away from the Fall MEMO Conference: A CMLE Scholarship

The following report was submitted by a CMLE Scholarship recipient.

Submitted by: Debbie Disher, Holdingford High School and Elementary Media Centers

Balance is a matter of perspective and is temporary.  We need to embrace the ups and downs and the wobbles.

Data collecting library statistics doesn’t have to be that difficult.  Start simple!  Do it on a monthly basis and then it won’t be so overwhelming at the end of the year.

“Real Men Read” program really can be done and doesn’t require special things.  Using a regular digital camera, PhotoShop Elements or other editing software, a poster size printer (or a local print shop) and some willing men.  I am now in the process of working with our photography teacher to have students do these as an assignment.

Things to consider with ebook readers:  batteries, how to circulate, cataloging, siding audio with electronic text can be done.  Great River Regional Library just started using overdrive.

Who will be responsible for teaching social networking ethics to students if we don’t teach it at school?

Web 2.0 tools that I need to take another look at included:  Library Thing, Shelfari, and Polldaddy.

Thanks to the conference I am going to try to be a better blog follower.  Plans to pursue:  The Ubiquitous Librarian (Brian Mathews), Techno Tuesday (Cathy Nelson), The Unquiet Librarian (Buffy Hamilton).

Kelly Tenkely has a new Bloom’s Taxonomy visual that looks really neat.  http://ilearntechnology.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Screen-shot-2010-08-31-at-11.36.54-AM.png

Two Youtube videos worth sharing with staff:  Infowhelm and Information Fluency and A Vision of K-12 Students Today.

Great statistics were given in the session 21st Century Learner.  Such as:  A higher percentage of adults admit to sending and receiving text messages while driving than teenagers.  Another thought that was shared is that our children are growing up in a world of filled with multimedia messages, yet they receive little if any training on evaluating and understanding these messages.

All in all, a great conference with many excellent sessions.  Now to take the time to put some of these ideas in motion.