International Speaker Series
A Professional Learning Package featuring Ross Todd, Mary Ann Harlan, Anita Brooks Kirkland & Dave Lankes
This professional learning package consists of a series of four online professional learning events featuring international guest speakers exploring a range of topical issues relevant to teacher librarians and teachers in 2020.
Each session is being held on a Saturday morning from 9-11am, with each 2 hour session consisting of a one hour presentation with Q&A followed by one hour of practical workshop-style activities.
Each 2 hour session will take place in SLANSW's Zoom conference room.
Those who register for this event will receive an email within 24 hours before the event with details to access this online session.
A maximum of 100 places are available for each session, so get your registrations in ASAP.
If you do not wish to register for all 4 sessions,
please go the the Events page on SLANSW's website
to register for a single event only.
Description of the International Speaker Series events package
International Speaker Series: 1 Saturday 20th June, 9-11am
Young People Living Safe Lives in Online Environments:
Convergence, Challenges, and Chances for Teacher Librarians
Presented by Dr Ross J. Todd
Description of session
Amidst the swirl of narratives around potential risks to young people in online environments, such as pornography, sexting, cyberbullying, stranger danger, and fake identity, their safety and well-being have emerged as global educational concerns. This presentation will present some of the current thinking, theorising, research findings, and challenges in relation to young people and safety in online environments. It will also address how teacher librarians can support and empower the agency of young people in online environments, and enact their safety through collective mindfulness, and their development of resilience, coping, adaptability and well-being.
Outcomes for attendees
After attending, participants will:
- Understand the different conceptions of safety in online environments;
- Be familiar with some key research evidence in relation to young people’s safety in online environments;
- Identify a range of evidence-based interventions in relation to online safety; and
- Develop safety strategies and library initiatives that focus on resilience, coping and mindfulness.
About Ross
Dr Ross J. Todd is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is Director of the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL), at Rutgers University. His scholarly work primarily focuses on the engagement of people and their information worlds, and understanding how this engagement can facilitate professional action and change, and make a difference to individuals, organisations, societies and nations. Current teaching and research interests centre on adolescent information seeking and use, with emphasis on the digital environment.
School Library Association of NSW through the Professional Teachers’ Council NSW is endorsed to provide the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered Professional Development for teachers accredited at Proficient, Highly Accomplished, and Lead levels.
Completing the Young People Living Safe Lives in Online Environments: Convergence, Challenges, and Chances for Teacher Librarians on 20/06/2020 will contribute 2 hours online of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered PD addressing 4.5.2 and 6.2.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.
International Speaker Series: 2 Saturday 25th July, 9-11am
Information Literacy in Reading Fiction
Presented by Dr Mary Ann Harlan
Description of session
Why do we read fiction? Do we read to learn about our selves? To learn about others? To learn about our world? To escape into another world?
Answers to these questions are all – yes. We engage in stories in all forms and through story we learn about ourselves, we learn about other’s experiences, we learn about worlds we both know and can only imagine. As readers these experiences seem obvious, for many of our students the answer is not so clear. Often reading fiction is seen as ‘school work’, and the power of story to provide us with information is not a connection that is clearly made.
This session will explore why this might be and how to challenge assumptions regarding information, how to engage with reading a story as a site of learning not of facts per se but of one’s self and our world. It will explore the embodied experience of reading, valuing emotional and affective actions as information.
Outcomes for attendees
After attending, participants will:
- Understand the different implications of the framing of information for students;
- Recognise how information is encountered and recognised while reading fiction;
- Have a developing understanding of an embodied reading experience; and
- Begin to develop a plan for sharing how to read fiction for information.
About Mary Ann
Dr Mary Ann Harlan is the Teacher Librarian Coordinator and an Assistant Professor at the School of Information at San Jose State University, California. She completed her PhD in 2012 in the San Jose State/QUT Gateway Program after completing research on the information practices of teens who create and share content online.
Since then she has been researching how fiction provides information to teens – including representations of girlhood in YA fiction, and the information practices of teens reading fiction. Prior to entering the PhD program, she was a middle and high school (ages 12-18) school librarian.
She has been an active presenter and writer around similar topics since 2000. Her most recent title is an examination of feminist Young Adult titles: The Girl-Positive Library: Inspiring Confidence, Creativity, and Curiosity in Young Women.
School Library Association of NSW through the Professional Teachers’ Council NSW is endorsed to provide the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered Professional Development for teachers accredited at Proficient, Highly Accomplished, and Lead levels.
Completing the Information Literacy in Reading Fiction on 25/07/2020 will contribute 2 hours online of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered PD addressing 2.5.2 and 6.2.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.
International Speaker Series: 3 Saturday 22nd August, 9-11am
The Post-Pandemic School Library Learning Commons:
Assessing Innovation and Moving Forward
Presented by Anita Brooks Kirkland
Description of session
Do we really matter? Do our actions improve student outcomes and have an impact on their learning and their lives? Do the strategies that we use in the library program have a positive influence on how well the school reaches its goals? These are pressing questions that can be addressed through research, especially the “homegrown” research that decision-makers trust the most. School libraries worldwide are innovating and dramatically shifting practice, particularly since the global pandemic has turned things upside-down. We need to have real plans to assess our successes and share what we are learning. The Canadian School Libraries Research Toolkit was created to address a compelling need for practitioner research in Canada, but we are sure that it is as relevant in New South Wales and all of Australia. The toolkit and other initiatives from Canadian School Libraries may help frame the path forward, post-pandemic.
Outcomes for attendees
After attending, participants will:
- Understand the importance of integrating research into practice;
- Have a basic understanding of useful research strategies;
- Be familiar with how the CSL Research Toolkit can help frame their research approach; and
- Be inspired to engage in action research to assess innovations in practice.
About Anita
As a writer, presenter and consultant, 
Anita Brooks Kirkland specialises in school library learning commons practices, program assessment, research, and advocacy. She draws on her extensive experience as a teacher educator, both as an instructor in teacher-librarianship for the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, and in her previous role as the Consultant for K-12 Libraries at the Waterloo Region District School Board in Ontario.
Anita was a contributing writer to Together for Learning, Ontario’s guideline document for the school library learning commons. Anita is very active in professional organisations, currently serving as chair of Canadian School Libraries (CSL) and co-editor of the CSL Journal. She was the 2014 president of the Ontario Library Association, and also served as president of the Ontario School Library Association in 2005. Anita shares an extensive collection of program resources, articles, and presentations on her website and blog, www.bythebrooks.ca.
School Library Association of NSW through the Professional Teachers’ Council NSW is endorsed to provide the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered Professional Development for teachers accredited at Proficient, Highly Accomplished, and Lead levels.
Completing the The Post-Pandemic School Library Learning Commons: Assessing Innovation and Moving Forward on 22/08/2020 will contribute 2 hours online of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered PD addressing 3.6.2 and 6.2.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.
International Speaker Series: 4 Saturday 5th September, 9-11am
Working for a New Normal
Presented by Dr R. David Lankes
Description of session
During the coronavirus pandemic many people used the phrase “a new normal”, mostly in wondering what life and work would be like after the lock downs. This is almost always presented in a negative frame, as in what we will lose. No handshakes. Sustained social distancing measures. Libraries will have to deliver fewer physical services. There will be a greater divide between the haves and have nots.
But what if we flipped that perspective. What do we want the new normal to be? What if the new normal was better than the “old” normal. What if virtual and physical services better reflected the community and improved learning, and we could clearly demonstrate the impacts of these changes? What if national and international copyright laws were more responsive to the needs of communities in times of crisis? What if libraries were centres not only of learning, but well-being – providing support for students, teachers, and parents alike?
In this session, David Lankes will encourage participants to think about an agenda for libraries – of all types – to create an improved “New Normal.”
Outcomes for attendees
After attending, participants will:
- Understand the importance of developing a Worldview that is informed by theory and deep concepts;
- Identify ways that facilitating access, knowledge, environment and motivation may be improved in the “New Normal”;
- Have a developing understanding of how teacher librarians can use participatory librarianship to create conversations that can support the school library in being agile, organic and responsive in new ways; and
- Recognise the importance of creating a new social compact, with an understanding that this will evolve over time as the library and education professions create an improved “New Normal”.
About Dave
R. David Lankes (known to many as ‘Virtual Dave’) is a Professor and the Director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Information Science. Dave has always been interested in combining theory and practice to create active research projects that make a difference. His work has been funded by organisations such as The MacArthur Foundation, The Institute for Library and Museum Services, NASA, The U.S. Department of Education, The U.S. Department of Defense, The National Science Foundation, The U.S. State Department, and The American Library Association.
Dave is a passionate advocate for libraries and their essential role in today’s society, earning him the American Library Association’s Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship in 2016. He also seeks to understand how information approaches and technologies can be used to transform industries. In this capacity he has served on advisory boards and study teams in the fields of libraries, telecommunications, education, and transportation including at the National Academies. He has been a visiting fellow at the National Library of Canada, The Harvard School of Education, and was the first fellow of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy. His book, The Atlas of New Librarianship won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature.
