What's happening in your school library right now?

As COVID-19 continues to affect school communities across Australia, SLANSW is hosting a one hour open online forum (OOF) to draw upon the collective wisdom of our members to share specific ideas and strategies to meet social distancing guidelines in the school library and help minimise the spread on this infectious disease within our schools and communities.

Lyn Hay, Vice President – Operations of SLANSW, will be facilitating this online session in SLANSW’s Zoom room.

This session is a little different to our regular online meet-ups which normally feature a guest presenter. The Open Online Forum format involves participants as presenters (similar to an unconference), where individuals volunteer to submit an idea on a single Powerpoint slide and have 2 minutes to speak to the slide before we move on to the next slide/presenter.

As a participant, it is not compulsory to be a presenter, however, we do encourage participants who are not presenting to also share their ideas in the chat as people talk to their slide. This will provide a rich text-based record of all ideas shared throughout the session of how school libraries and teacher librarians are responding to the pandemic.

We are calling for contributions on any topic where a TL is proactive in responding to the pandemic in some way, no matter how big or small, everything counts!

Whether you have implemented collection management processes in place to ensure effective and equitable access to resources, or have introduced measures to improve hygiene and sanitary practices between library users, or are collaborating with others in the broader community to support students, teachers and parents.

What additional cleaning services are you employing? Any tips you have learned from public libraries, bookstores, shopping centres etc? How is your school dealing with equity issues in terms of both devices and bandwidth? What new learning technologies have you introduced to expand your digital services? How are you using your school’s LMS or other platforms to designing online learning experiences for students?

How can the teacher librarian take a leadership role in helping their school accommodate the diverse challenges currently faced in times of COVID-19? Help us identify initiatives where school libraries can take a lead role.

Add your piece to the puzzle!

How do I contribute as a presenter?

It’s easy. Just email a Powerpoint slide file to info@slansw.net.au by 5pm on Monday 30 March (no late submissions can be accepted, so get in early!) Please set your slide size to Widescreen 16:9 and include your name in the bottom right corner of the slide. Please note an effective slide will include a heading that reflects the nature of your idea, and no more than 2-3 bullet points using large font, supported by one or more images.

And on the night of Tuesday 31 March between 7-8pm, be prepared to speak about your slide when it is shown on the screen – you have a maximum of 2 minutes per slide.

Note: an individual can submit more than one slide as a presenter, but each slide must address a different issue, topic, solution, strategy or process.

If you have any questions about your slide, please email Lyn via info@slansw.net.au.

How do I participate?

All participants must register their attendance.

About SLANSW Open Online Forums

This open online forum is not accredited by NESA, but does qualify as Teacher Identified Professional Development (TIPD).

A maximum of 100 places are available for this session, so get your registrations in ASAP.

Participation in this forum is at no cost to members.  Non-members may access the session for $35 (Payment is via credit card only).

This one-hour forum takes 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.