To maximize training opportunities for people engaged in sustaining and advancing indigenous culture, the Institute of Museum and Library Services is providing up to $75,000 in scholarship funding for eligible applicants to attend the 2017 International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort and Spa, located on the Santa Ana Pueblo outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Pre-conference workshops take place on Tuesday, October 10 and conference sessions are scheduled Wednesday, October 11 and Thursday, October 12.
The 2017 conference for the Association for Rural and Small Libraries takes place from Sept. 6th – 9th and will be in St. George, Utah this year. Since many of CMLE’s member libraries are small or in rural locations, we thought this conference might be of interest to you! And don’t forget, we have scholarships available to help you attend these sorts of professional opportunities!
Registration for the conference isn’t open until April 3rd, but you are encouraged to make hotel reservations now!
The keynote speakers for the event are bestselling authors Richard Paul Evans and Brandon Mull.
The following post was submitted by CMLE scholarship recipient Jeanette McNew, Talahi Media Specialist, St. Cloud School District.
I would like to thank CMLE for the scholarship to attend the TIES 2015 Conference: Breaking Through: Transforming Pedagogy with Technology!
In 1990, I attended my first TIES conference and was inspired by Roger Wagner’s HyperStudio. Things have really changed since then, but once again I was thrilled to be able to attend. As a Media Specialist in a school library working to integrate a MakerSpace, I was eager to listen to Sylvia Martinez author of Invent to Learn. Although she made many good points about authentic learning in the area of STEM, George Couros, author of The Innovator’s Mindset, stole the show. He is a gifted speaker and truly inspired us to think about being a kid in our classroom while making us laugh and cry all in the same moment. Listening to his keynote really motivated me to improve on what I do for myself and my students each and every day.
What I love about TIES in the recent years is it is no longer about the newest and coolest technology, but has embraced the application of those technologies in real-time situations. Many times during the two days I would hear the comment, “My brain is full!” There is something for everyone and rarely do you find someone there who is not inspired by something they heard in a session or while collaborating with a new connection that was made. Do not misunderstand me – I was one of those in the “playground” this year checking out the Lego robotics, Swivl, and the Bee-bots.
Several sessions I attended really made me think about branding. Who are we allowing to brand our school and why do we let them control what is being said about us? How can we make social media work for us in branding our school and teaching digital citizenship? With that comes staff development. How do we best meet our teachers’ needs for staff development in a differentiated manner? There were several really good sessions with some great ideas to implement meeting these needs of students and staff.
Once again, thank you CMLE for the opportunity to attend this amazing conference.
Are professional development funds tight in your work setting? Is the money to pay your registration to a conference in the budget, but there is no money for hotel or mileage, or to pay a sub so you can be away from your workplace?
CMLE offers scholarships of up to $200 per fiscal year per individual for staff affiliated with any type of library in Aitkin, Benton, Chisago, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, Sherburne, Stearns, Todd and Wright counties in Central Minnesota. The scholarships can be used to attend workshops, conferences, library meetings or task forces, and other library-related activities to promote engagement and/or professional development. All expenses mentioned earlier are appropriate and we encourage you to use the scholarships even if it can’t cover all of the costs. And, if you use our scholarship to help with costs, feel free to mention to your administrator that you have used our program!
Need help paying for that sub? CMLE scholarships come in very handy in settings that require your employer to pay for a “sub” while you are off enhancing your library skill sets. When you fill out the form, just indicate the amount you need to cover that expense. The ITEM Conference is coming up the first week in October and is in St. Cloud, the MLA Conference follows during the second week of October in S. Paul. We would love to help you get there through the use of our scholarship program, but now is the time to apply!
We all owe it to ourselves to keep our skill sets sharp. Confidence and new energy often result when we take time to invest in ourselves and spend time with our peers. CMLE would like to support you to that end. For all of the details and to apply for a scholarship, go to https://cmle.org/services/scholarships/. The application is quite simple and should take no more than 10 minutes if you know what you want to attend and have the event information in hand.
For more info on the ITEM and MLA conferences and links to registration, go to our Upcoming Library Events listing.
Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/kncgcov, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The following post was submitted by CMLE scholarship recipient Maria Burnham, Library Media Specialist at Sauk Rapids – Rice High School.
I attended the Lake Superior Library Symposium (LSLS) on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth on June 5, 2015 thanks to a scholarship from CMLE. A friend of mine from high school is a librarian at UMD and is one of the planners for the conference. He asked me to attend the conference as well as present on what I’ve been doing with my school library MakerSpace. I had not heard of the conference before, but I am certainly glad I made the journey north to attend.
I very much enjoyed the LSLS (as well as all of the social gatherings before and after the conference). The conference numbers are quite small, making it easy to spend time connecting with other professional librarians, particularly those who are academic or public librarians. And although I may have been the only K-12 professional at the conference this year, I learned a great deal because many topics that pertain to public or academic libraries also pertain to my media center.
The keynote speaker for the morning was Char Booth, a fierce library advocate. She challenged us to think about reframing our narratives of our library, to make sure that people don’t just see us as a container of content, but rather a place of experience for patrons. Char focused on advocacy and outreach, and it got me thinking about how I show people what the SRRHS library is and does for my school community.
Following the keynote, I attended several breakout sessions including one about privacy literacy, one about using data to paint a better picture of our libraries, and one about planning around community needs. From these sessions, I gathered many ideas on how I can better keep data on my library activity, how I can set library goals to ensure library efficiency, and how to go about strategically planning for the goals I set forth as a result of the needs of my community.
I am hoping to attend the LSLS again next year, and if any K-12 librarians want to attend with me, I’m game for carpooling! From this conference, I feel inspired to continue to grow professionally and in ways that will benefit my patrons.
As a bonus, I heard about a few professional book titles that I will be looking into. I wanted to share these with you as well:
Angwin, Julia. Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015. Print.
Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York: Random House, 2007. Print.
Jarvis, Jeff. Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.
Nissenbaum, Helen. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford Law, 2010. Print.
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The 2017 conference for the
