Letter to Joyce Valenza
March 13, 2008
Dear Joyce,
Hello. I wanted to thank you for joining us in Columbia, SC to at the South Carolina Association of School Librarians conference. I am not a Library Media Specialist. I am a technology education specialist and I work daily with educators to help with the implementation of technology in the classroom. I wanted to thank you for challenging the state library media specialists to “water the flowers before the rocks.” Your ideas were refreshing. Your willingness to open the “virtual door” in your library was enlightening. The shift in information and how it is gathered has changed librarian’s/media specialists jobs and you are truly making that shift with your students and teachers. Your collaboration with teachers and students seems so natural. I think my absolute favorite thing you shared was your wiki on Hamlet. A close second was the iGoogle pages for every student. I would love for our students to have access to to ALL Google has to offer.
I know your time was limited in the keynote and the hour sessions throughout the day just weren’t enough to fully express how to make the shift in the media center but I think you gave our state media specialists something to think about. You may have called it brow beating but I am going to call it an awakening. THANK YOU for sharing with South Carolina.
My only hope is that with this awakening will come a shift and a new way of thinking about media centers.
Thank you, again, for your time and effort.
MaryAnn Sansonetti
For those of you who want more ideas, visit Joyce Valenza’s wiki
Technorati Tags: joycevalenza valenza sansonetti iGoogle wiki SCASL SCASL2008
Entry Filed under: Conferences, Reflections. .
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1.
Pat | March 14th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I am a special ed teacher but I wish I could have been there. Thanks for sharing the wiki!
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2.
Brenda B | March 15th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Ditto on your comments to Joyce. What a wonderful opportunity! However, you were a tremendous inspiration to me as well! Wednesday was wonderful and the session on Google Lit Trips – I had no idea such a thing existed! There is sooooo much out there, one cannot possibly keep up with it all without our network of technology gurus. Thanks for all of your help during the SCASL conference, as well.
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3.
Heather Loy | March 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Nicely summarized and I share your sentiments. I think the SCASL organization and Martha Alewine/State Department of Education should take it upon themselves to see that at least one blog site (say Edublogs) and one wiki source are not to be banned by ANY districts. Additionally, how on Earth are we to teach students to be responsible users of technology when we say we don’t trust them at all because we block EVERYTHING!
BTW: I too attended your Google-Lit trips. Thank you for sharing that resource with me. I’ll be highlighting it on my blog shortly.
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4.
MaryAnn Sansonetti | March 15th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Thanks for your comments. The google lit-trips was my co-worker/friend Julia Davis… her blog is at http://techjulia.edublogs.org. Stop by and say hi to her!
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5.
joyce valenza | March 16th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Thank you for your very kind words, MaryAnn! I had a wonderful trip and I am very happy if I lit a couple of flames. We are just at the beginning of this exciting new movement and we all have so much retooling to do. I recently noticed a lot of SC action on Twitter (and in my personal email).
Please let me know how I can continue to help.
joyce
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6.
MaryAnn Sansonetti | March 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Thank you for stopping by Joyce! You definitely ignited some flames.. Hopefully I can help make them a full fledged fire!
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