Are you an alum of what was the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Science and is now the School of Information? If so, we have something to celebrate!

After a many-year absence, a full-time faculty position with a focus on school libraries has been restored!

(I’m lucky enough to have it, but that’s a story for another day.)

To celebrate, SI is sponsoring my Thursday 1pm talk at MAME. The talk is open to all MAME attendees … but there’s a special perk if you’re a SILS or SI alum.

The alumni staffers are giving away a fantastic new book, The Many Faces of School Library Leadership, for UM alums to take home with them. We have 25 copies, so check out the RSVP details below.

The book features chapters on various kinds of leadership by Ken Haycock, Helen Adams, Deb Levitov, Vi Harada, and more. I was very honored to be in such company, and I know it will be a useful way for alums to refresh their self-perception as a leader, which is also the focus of the talk.

If you shout Go Blue on Saturdays, come and join us!

MAME – Home via kwout

I’m off to ALA.  If you can’t make it, here’s some summer reading for you.

The Michigan Association for Media in Education has taken its journal, Media Spectrum, online.  The new issue went live this week!

Contributors you may know include Evelyn Freeman, Marsha Lambert, Buffy Hamilton, and Karen Lemmons. And be sure to turn to pages 20-22 to see some of my students’ manifestos on media and resources for children and young adults, a project I first blogged about here.
 

Today is the Michigan Association for Media in Education’s Winter Leadership Conference, which we hosted here at the University of Michigan School of Information.

It’s been a great day … full of online resources and strategies, celebration of successful librarians, stress relief, door prizes (!!), practical strategies for book challenges, and me doing a session on instructional strategies that can help us nudge student learning deeper. (Ah, Nudging!)

We’re wrapping up the day with Jeff Stanzler and Maurita Holland’s Michigan Matters project, which is a cool online, text-based module system that encourages kids to read content and engage in conversation with a character in the story.  Behind the scenes, a UM student mentor responds to their thoughts in the role of a character.

I’m really fond of Michigan Matters because it gives teachers the chance to get students engaged in doing close digital reading (you can’t skim the content, or you won’t understand the story, unlike online research) and in online communication.  Best of all, once the teacher registers his/her class with Michigan Matters, the mentor takes on the bulk of the feedback responsibility.  Not only does this mean that kids can have a rich digital experience, but it doesn’t require an enormous teacher workload.  The modules are pre-made, but the conversations are spontaneous.  It manages to be a package that … amazingly … is not prescriptive.

It’s a reform movement that doesn’t require a huge time investment … and because it doesn’t, it’s more likely to stick. 

You can learn more about UM’s simulations projects here and take a sample tour.  If you’re a Michigan teacher or school librarian and would like to have your kids involved, Jeff and Maurita would be happy to consider you for next year, as the term at UM is nearing its close.

PS – Speaking of Nudging, I submitted the last column for the 2009-2010 season today. It’s a terrific column, expanded from one page to THREE, and full of great ideas for nudging Science Fair along.  Which only means one thing … time to think about Nudging for next year! We’re looking for your ideas … learn more and submit here! The whole year’s topics are standing by, awaiting your perspective.