Just stumbled upon a blog post that quotes my SLMAM article on social bookmarking from a few years ago. Take a look. 

Ahhh, at last I get a chance to recap my whirlwind trip to the AASL conference.  I was only in Charlotte for 48 hours … but I was busy!

First up, I met with other members of the Heinemann-Raintree Library Advisory Board and Heinemann-Raintree staff, and we looked at upcoming and about-to-be-released titles.  Chris Harris spoke at NECC this summer about how librarians need to advocate for their students and actively converse with database vendors about what their students need.  This was our chance to do the same with print materials.  What content did we need? How should that content be formatted? What reading levels are needed?  In other words, it’s a librarian’s dream!

Here are some takeaways from those conversations for school librarians:

• Advocate for what you need. As an example, after leaving Charlotte, I went to Sam Houston State University for their Book Festival.  We were lucky to be guided by current SHSU students, many of whom were school librarians already.  As we were driven back to the airport, one SHSU student told us how she bought lots of K-2 bilingual books, but then the bilingual market dried up.  She wanted her kids to stay strong bilingually — how could she do that? I suggested that she let publishers know about this (Texas is, after all, a HUGE market) … and tucked the idea away for later.  If publisher reps come to your school, this is the easiest way to give feedback.  They do take that feedback back to the editors!
• You have LOTS of choices when it comes to what you buy. Even within a single company, there are often multiple lines that will help you pinpoint and make the best choices you need. 
• You know your students’ needs best.  Do they need more high-powered graphics? Or a pared-down look? Trust your gut.

As part of our Media for Children and Young Adults class, I ask each student to create a YA book trailer as a podcast or videocast.  I point them to a few samples, then they can choose the software and hosting platform that works for them.  I intentionally leave this open, don’t demo different softwares, etc., because I want them to know what it’s like to be in the field and figure these things out. I’m available to help if they get stuck (and some do).

Jamie asked if she could do kinetic typography.  I had never heard of this, but it’s essentially a graphic design technique that lets words flow across the page in various colors, fonts, angles, and speeds.  After week 1, she was halfway done but had given 12 hours to the cause.  Undaunted, she continued for week 2 until she had invested nearly 25 hours in it!

You can see her awesome results here. 

Here’s what I learned from this experience: had I mandated any particular software or approach, or had I turned down her idea, I bet she never would have spent all that time on the project.  But by being open to her approach, she learned something she wanted to learn, as did the rest of the class, and the product is just great. 

This is what the 21st-century scholars are talking about when they suggest choice in products.  When we can give students options for how to express themselves (within reason, of course — I probably would have said no if she had asked to stand out on the Diag and mime the book talk), motivation goes up, and, by correlation, so does the work.

(PS -for a simplified book talk strategy, visit http://booktalksampler.wikispaces.com to see the resources we used to create podcast book talks last weekend at the Sam Houston Book Festival — more on that to come!)