Hands on Literacy 2012 memories

Hands on Literacy November 17 2012

Nearly 300 delegates; 46 workshop presenters! The Hands on Literacy Committee 2012 is to be congratulated for organising another very successful Hands on Literacy conference for ISLN. Their hard work and dedication was evident in the smooth running of the day and the positive feedback received regarding the speakers.

Keynote speaker Joyce Valenza did a fantastic job of opening the conference and inspiring the audience. We were so fortunate to have such a great educator with us.

Judy O'Connell's closing keynote was a perfect conclusion to the conference. She took the audience from a broad sweep and future-gazing to a call for action at the local school and library level.
Links to both presentations can be found on the website, and Judy seeks your feedback on the future direction of teacher-librarian training (also linked on the website).

Workshop presentations provided by some presenters have been uploaded here.
The conference was preceeded on Friday by a School Library Tour, so capably organised by Isabel Jones and hosted by generous colleagues at Tanglin, the Canadian School, SAS, and UWC. This was followed by drinks at Dempsey Hill. Participants commented on the value not only of the school visits but the networking opportunities within the group on the day.

Hands On Literacy - Call for Papers

Hands on Literacy 2012. Call for papers.

The call for papers for Hands on Literacy 2012 has been  announced.

The conference will be held at the Australian International School on Saturday November 17th and will feature internationally renowned educators and innovators,  

Joyce Valenza and Judy O'Connell.

Proposals for papers and workshops may be submitted until July 31st at

www.handsonlit.com

This professional development day is aimed at educators from across all curriculum areas, thus reflecting the important role literacy has across a school.

Proposed workshop themes include:

v Digital Literacy (e.g. Web 2.0 Tools, Social Software, iPads & iPods, e-learning)

v Engaging with print (e.g. Engaging readers, phonics, Literacy Circles, teen fiction)

v Visual Literacy & The Arts (e.g. Drama, Graphic Novels, knockout displays)

v Research and Inquiry (e.g., Information Literacy & the Inquiry Cycle, Note-taking)

v Librarianship (e.g. collection development, information literacy, e-books)

These themes will be explored for early years, elementary, middle school and high school students.

 

Hands on Literacy @ AISS, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012

Thanks to the result of the poll, the decision has been made to continue with Hands on Literacy in its full form this November.

The Australian International School will be the venue with Ben Farr (TTS) and Linda Twitchett (AISS) as the Co-convenors of the HOL committee.

They are looking for volunteers for the various subcommittees as well as any suggestions of a theme for this year's conference.  Fill in the form below and press the Submit button at the bottom.

Looking ahead to Hands on Literacy, Nov. 17, 2012

There will be an open meeting to organize the planning of the next Hands on Literacy conference, scheduled for Saturday, November 17, 2012, hosted at the new UWC East campus in Tampines.  Anyone at your schools is welcome to join us -- whether librarian or literacy coach or reading fanatic.

Come to the planning meeting:  Monday, March 19th -- 5:30 -- at the Prologue bookshop on the 4th level of Ion on Orchard Road.  RSVP to Katie (kda@uwcsea.edusg/8233-2922) if you are coming to that meeting OR if you are interested in being on a subcommittee (Venue & Catering, Publicity, Sponsorship & Trade Show, Digital Work (website, app, etc.), Programme (guest speakers & workshops) & Registration, Budget & Finance, etc.).  Some of you may be on spring break that week, but just let me know and I'll put you on the Google Doc of the minutes.

As this will be our third conference, we are going into it a bit calmer than the first two -- but, of course, there can always be improvements and changes.

Probably the biggest difference about this conference will be that it is preceded (on the Sunday to Thursday) by a major conference in Doha specifically about international school libraries -- the IASL conference, "The Shifting Sands of School Librarianship".  Click here to see their conference website.

Here is a copy of the Call for Papers that was posted on the ECIS iSkoodle:

Call for Proposals - IASL Doha in November by Linda Hoiseth - Wednesday, 7 March 2012, 08:59 AM The Qatar International School Librarians are pleased to be hosting the 2012 International Association of School Librarianship conference in Doha, November 12-15 (preconference on November 11). We have some great speakers lined up, including Stephen Krashen (whose latest - yet unpublished - research is all about the value of libraries), Jack Gantos, Joyce Valenza, Laurie Halse Anderson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Eppo van Nispen. You have until April 1st to propose a research paper for the peer-reviewed International Research Forum and until April 15 to propose a workshop or other presentation.  For the online proposal form and other information, go tohttp://iasl2012.org.  The registration fee is  reduced for those chosen to present. Qatar is the place to be (look for the recent 60 Minutes and CNN reports on Qatar), and November is a great time to be here.  It's going to be a great conference!

There doesn't seem to be any financial information up on the website yet.  So we don't know what it will cost to attend -- or what discount you get if you do a workshop.

NB: We are trying to finalize arrangements with Joyce Valenza, teacher-librarian extraordinaire, to have her fly from the Doha conference straight to Singapore to be our keynote speaker on Saturday the 17th.  The trick is she needs to be back at work on the East coast of the USA by Monday.  The time zones are in our favor, but it will mean she will have to leave Singapore late on Saturday.  We'll keep you posted.

A lot of us here are interested in attending Doha -- and I don't see any reason why we couldn't get ourselves so organized that we could all go to Doha and still be ready for our own conference on the Saturday.  As IASL is such librarian-specific professional development, it would be a shame to miss it just to put on our more generic literacies day of learning.  So that's the goal -- go to IASL in Doha and put on a great one-day conference on the Saturday, along with Joyce Valenza.

Share your ideas with us

Even if you don't come to the Monday meeting or don't volunteer to be on a subcommittee, you can still give us your ideas.  How could we make it better?  Have you seen something at a conference that you think we could adopt for our own?

Click here to see the website of the last one in 2010 - www.handsonlit.com.  Once we start populating a new website, I'll switch over the domain name, but for now it's useful to see what we did before.

The workshop strands we identified for our last conference were

Digital Literacy  /  Traditional Literacy  /  Visual Literacy & The Arts  /  Research & Inquiry  /  Early Years  /  Librarianship  /  Other

Feedback can be via the comments here or direct emails to librarynetwork@gmail.com or personal comments to any of the executive committee.

-- Katie

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