Monday, November 12, 2018

MAC Fall Symposium 2018

I had the privilege of being invited to help lead this year's Midwest Archives Fall Symposium. What an amazing day! The theme was "From the Stacks to the Classroom" and we had such a wonderful day together exploring exciting topics, sharing ideas, and growing together! Many thanks to my co-presenters, Rachel Seale (Iowa State University Special Collections) and Anna Trammell (Pacific Lutheran University). I left feeling as though I had 34+ new friends to nerd out with about instruction!

We began the day with one of my favorite activities (that I borrowed from the Info Lit workshops I lead with Becky Canovan of University of Dubuque): Solution or Sympathy! Y'all, archivists and librarians are such kindred spirits and the questions or situations that were submitted and shared with the group were phenomenal! Here's how Solution or Sympathy works. Participants:
  • Write down instruction/archives-related questions or concerns;
  • Share the questions anonymously to see if the group has experienced something similar;
  • Offer up possible solutions, or sympathize, and let the person who submitted the question know that at least they're not alone.
What I love about this activity is that it works in almost any context with almost any profession! Everyone has problems and everyone wants to know either 1) what have others done to address/resolve this problem, or 2) who is here and can at least commiserate about this. Because, sometimes it's nice to just know you're not the only one.

We could have done Solution or Sympathy all day (seriously) but transitioned to an active learning/collaborative learning session primarily led by Rachel Seale. I LOVED the narrative building exercise she introduced to the group. To use this in your own classroom, divide your artifacts/documents into 4-6 groups. Similarly, divide students into the same amount of groups and ask them to read and evaluate the documents, preparing to share out with the rest of the class information about their resource. Because you have cultivated the collection, eventually through the sharing-out process, students will start to see a story emerge from the resources. By the end, the whole class should be able to pull together the whole story - either through a whole-class discussion, or by a volunteer student who can tie it all together. You can also discuss what's still missing from the story, or try to predict what happened next. Lots of great inquiry can be built from this example! Rachel also led another activity where groups taught each other about various Collaborative Learning Techniques. She recommended the resource Using Primary Sources: Hands-On Instructional Exercises edited by Bahde, Smedberg, and Taormina.


Rachel & I collaborated to lead a session on Growing Your Instruction Program. We set up table-topics where participants could self-select which conversation they wanted to participate in. We prepared some conversation-starter prompts, but essentially the participants ran each table independently. All we asked was that a recorder be assigned to each topic so those who are interested in more than one topic could still learn after the fact, despite not being able to be in two places at once, because the notes were shared out with participants after the conference. We did allow for participants to rotate tables partway through the activity, though most stayed at their original topic. The overarching topics were:

  • Building relationships with faculty
  • Building relationships with students
  • Building relationships with colleagues (librarians, archives, staff)
  • Advocating for resources
  • Marketing your archives

Anna Trammell led a session on Designing Special Collections Instruction Sessions Using a Social Justice Framework, and also shared out a session focusing on Utilizing Instructional Technologies in the Classroom. A few of the highlights from those sessions are found in my tweets, below.

I led a session on Assessing Your Instruction Program and presented 60 assessment ideas or tools in what was slotted for 60 minutes. I warned the audience that I'd likely be talking like the Micro Machines commercial guy or an auctioneer, and I did.
I also promised that if there was extra time, we'd go back and do some more Solution or Sympathy questions. Well, I was totally Micro Machines-y and wound up covering the 60 ideas in 30 minutes! So we dug back into the Solution or Sympathy, which also seemed to be a hit. It worked out well!

We closed out the day with an Instructional Design Workshop where groups used provided scenarios to develop a lesson plan that incorporated some of the elements covered throughout the day. Groups had ~1 hour to work on their plan and then reported out to the group:

  • A brief description of the scenario
  • Explanation of how they addressed communication barriers, incompatible expectations, and how they worked with the requestor to find out more about their needs to develop a plan. 
  • Identified their learning outcomes
  • Described or demonstrated how they incorporated active learning techniques
  • Described what items they used (from collections)
  • They also had the option to share out instructional technologies or social justice framework elements if they chose to include them
  • How they assessed the activity/lesson
What rich conversations were generated throughout the entire day! I loved learning from participants and helping facilitate activities! Below are my tweets from the day -- with tidbits and takeaways from the various sessions! Thanks again to participants for being so wonderful, and to MAC for inviting me to help plan and facilitate the day!










































Posted by Cara at 11:02 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, November 8, 2018

ILA Conference 2018 - Cedar Rapids

What an engaging and exiting time we had at the fall Iowa Library Association conference (Oct. 3-5)! This year in particular, I felt like I was constantly on the go, trying to connect with the ILA membership, helping lead or session manage presentations, and it was all worth it! You know when you get that fuzzy-in-your-forehead feeling at the end of a conference (the one that tells you you've been too much of an extrovert for too long) then it's been a productive and engaging conference! I definitely had that and needed to retreat and process to recharge after I returned home, but in a good way!

Wednesday
The opening reception was held at the always-amazing Cedar Rapids Public Library. I am constantly impressed with their staff and facilities, and basically stalk their twitter account and Facebook pages to learn about their creative community programs. Everyone was so welcoming, and it looked like everyone was enjoying themselves! I ducked out a little early to go meet with my Thursday presentation group to do one last talk through of our presentation.

Thursday
Thursday was absolutely PACKED! I began the day by being in two places at once. The Exec Board members try to have representation at the official breakfasts that kick off each day of the conference, and Thursday we had the Leadership Institute Reunion Breakfast and the New Members/New Attendees Breakfast. I split my time between the two and enjoyed meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends!


After a warm welcome from city administrators from Cedar Rapids, Hiawatha, and Marion, Thursday's keynote speaker was P.C. Sweeney, who focused on the difference between advocating for libraries and becoming an activist, creating change, for libraries through voting actions and attitudes. This means not necessarily focusing on getting people to like libraries (they already do!), but rather taking concrete steps to support libraries through funding, voting, and action.



I took a shift or two at the ILA Booth and enjoyed visiting with attendees, and braisntorming & wondering aloud together about library issues. We also gave one final push for our Adopt a Library Puerto Rico partner impacted by devastating hurricanes. In the end, we together raised more than $3,000 to help with their recovery efforts!

The awards luncheon highlighted the efforts of some amazing people contributing blood, sweat, and tears to Iowa's library communities. Congrats to all who received awards! We are truly lucky to be able to call them colleagues and friends!

The afternoon was spent connecting through subdivision meetings...

...engaging in dialogue during the Diversity & Inclusion Unconference session I facilitated...

...and presenting on culturally respectful programs and collections.


The handouts/slides for this presentation can be found using these links:
Thursday ended with a rousing game of trivia, but this year I was helping lead it rather than participate on a team. From this I learned that I much more enjoy helping with the trivia than answering the questions (for most categories. This year they had a Gilmore Girls category and I would have totally carried my team if I were playing -- I got each one correct in my head, but tried to keep a poker face to not give it away to the teams). Next year we won't have trivia because of the new joint conference with Nebraska, but hopefully in the future we can bring it back! I'd love to help again!

I loved that other attendees felt excited and inspired throughout the conference, too!


 Friday
Friday was another packed day that started out with Breakfast with the Board. Then I popped over to the Conference Tweetup to chat in person with those we'd been following online.
I was sitting at the head table for Friday's keynote from Miguel Figueroa. He focused on forecasting for libraries, identifying signals, trends, and values for libraries of the future. Forecasting isn't predicting and waiting for something to happen; rather it's an educated examination. Examples and discussion points from his breakout session that followed the keynote are below:














Cathy Cranston from University of Iowa gave an absolutely phenomenal presentation on empowering student citizens to vote! This presentation was one of my top highlights from the conference!


















At lunch we did the traditional passing of the gavel...but this year Michael misplaced the gavel, so he gave Dan a replacement... in the form of a rubber mallet.

During this time, we also recognized the incalculable contributes of Melissa Primus, the association account manager/wizard extraordinaire. Melissa accepted a new position and this was her last conference with us. She has been amazing to work with and we wish her all the best with her new job!


We tend to wrap each conference by announcing the All Iowa Reads books for the next year, and then having the current year's AIR author do a reading/presentation.




The final selection was announced Oct. 29:


See you next year in the Omaha area!
Posted by Cara at 11:47 AM 0 comments
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