Award and Gala Season for School Libraries

Canadian Library Association/CASL Awards Announced

BCTLA Winners Score "Triple Crown for BC School Libraries"

Whoo-hoo! It's official! For a third time in recent years, a Vancouver TL has won the Follett International Teacher-Librarian of the Year Award. Joining this list of prestigious winners that includes General Gordon TL Mary Locke and now-retired Prince of Wales TL Karen Cordiner is our long-time accomplished TL colleague Michele Farquharson who, you may remember, last year, won BCTLA recognition for her work. She will receive this award at the Canadian Library Association Conference in Montreal next week. When asked to write a letter of reference, Ken Haycock said, "I have only one question: What has taken so long?" We are pretty proud of you, Michele.

Whoo-hoo! It's official! We have another provincial winner not unfamiliar to local TLs in Karen Lindsay of our BCTLA Executive and Victoria School District note. Read about this year's winner of the Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship. This award was established in recognition of CLA/ACB past president Dr. Ken Haycock, distinguished educator, administrator and advocate, not unknown to us here in the Vancouver school district!

Whoo-hoo! It's official! The BCTLA Executive has won The Angela Thacker Memorial Award that honours teacher-librarians who have made contributions to the profession through publications, productions or professional development activities that deal with topics relevant to teacher-librarianship and/or information literacy. Well, this was a "win" for school districts and schools that undertook the DEAR initiative in the Fall. The Award also acknowledges the cross-sector collaborative work with public, academic, and special libraries and the Ministry of Education's Public Library Services Branch in a range of provincial initiatives, including digitization, literacy, and database licensing.

Your BCTLA Executive members who jointly received this award do include some local TLs (VP Sylvia Zubke, Liaison Chair Ekdahl -- that's ME -- and Web Steward Val Hamilton) all under the truly excellent direction of our amazing leader and Coquitlam's Chief TL, Heather Daly, with help from nationally recognized VP Karen Lindsay.

Note that, while we had awaited this announcement for some weeks, it was disappointing not to see the names of our winning BCTLA Executive members who have all worked as a team with such keen energies and passions, and most of them are returning! Next year we will welcome
Chris Evans as Treasurer and Michele Farquharson as co-chair for Continuing Education, with Lynn Turner. It has been a joy to work with such committed and visionary TLs.

Click here for a review of past BCTLA members who have won such significant awards.

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Chocolate Lily Book Awards 2009 Gala!

Kidsbooks 3083 West Broadway, Vancouver
Date: Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Time: 6:45 pm doors open; 7:15-9 pm

Because of the popularity of this event, tickets are $5.00 per person but can be redeemed for full value toward any of the nominated Chocolate Lily books available, during the event.

Meet BC children's authors, have a book signed, and see which authors’ books were voted the best by BC elementary school readers.

For more information, call 604-738-5335 or email general@kidsbooks.ca

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From Patricia Carmichael, GiggleIT Team Coordinator, IASL:

GiggleIT with GiggleCritter!

Motivate, engage, encourage and support - but most of all have fun! Registration is FREE!

Cute, loveable Gigglepet prizes! Meet new friends from around the world! The GiggleIT Project is a global collaborative publishing project hosted by the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL), working in partnership with the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL). Designed to help children around the world improve their English language literacy skills, the GiggleIT Project encourages students ages 10-14 to contribute their writings to an online book (eBook) celebrating stories and humour from their culture. Humour, just like tragedy, is a vehicle that can be used to promote cross-cultural understandings and collaboration for children and young adults around the world. Children’s work will be published internationally and will identify their culture through literature.

Written by children for children, the eBook will contain children’s stories, jokes and poetry. The project will inspire children to be creative and make cross-cultural connections with other children from around the world as they learn about humour from other countries, while improving their literacy skills.

A range of competitions, as well as teaching and learning packages, will motivate and stimulate reading and writing skills whilst supporting teaching and learning with examples and worksheets which can be downloaded into handouts for the class. Yes, all teaching resources can be downloaded!

Register now to be part of this incredible international project here at the IASL WEBSITE. Check out the global regions page for IASL as well.

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As ever I have some out new and interesting school-library-related "stuff" of professional interest to 21st century TLs, from book news and launches to technology tools and insights; this week, have a look at:

• Twitter/Austen/bloggy mash-up? Yep! Check out the Mad-hatted mom-blogger friend of Maryann! Well, you had to guess that last part. Just consider the educational uses of Twitter.
  
• The new Related Blogger link, Free Technology for Teachers. What took me so long to find Richard Byrne and his blogful of reviews and suggested applications for technology integration! Winner, Edublogs Award, 2008. AMAZING AMAZING stuff here.
  
• Also the newly-added Related Blogger link, Dangerously Irrelevant. Amerian academic blogger Dr Scott McLeod reflects on insights of Canadian social historian and comementator Gwynne Dyer as he blogs to address some of the K-12 incongruities in technology, leadership, and the future of schools. Read Dyer quote: Why this title? This blog has archives worth checking and sharing with administrators.
  
• Gary Hartzell's guest posting to Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog, on being able to provide a ready defense when, "in today’s electronic environment and damaged economy, the value of libraries per se is ... questioned right along with questions about whether you can defend continuing to spend money on print as opposed to electronic resources."
  
• Film Showing: June 1, Rm 400, Ed Centre, 4 pm: FREE showing of Mr H and his Unruly Puppets, featuring Mr Heidbreder himself and film director/producer, as well as Vancouver educator, Annie O'D from Dickens.
  
• Book Launch: Some of you met Tiffany Friesen (Poirier) for the first time at Winter Tonic. This young Vancouver "gifted" educator (third in a line of well-known local educators) will have her first-ever book launch event for Q is for Question: An ABC of Philosophy on Wednesday, May 27, at 7:00 pm at Kidsbooks, 3083 West Broadway. There will be prizes, snacks, special presentations, speeches, and fun mingling with local teachers, librarians, parents, children, and more. Please pass this invitation on to anyone you know who may be interested. Tiffany is very excited.
  
• Reading Rules, a student reading blog which is an excellent model for consideration with classroom reviewing and reading activities.
  
• The original logos captured in this 2006 Flickr graphic of Web 2.0 companies compared with British social photographer Meg Pickard's 2009-adapted Flickr graphic of those Web 2.0 companies still around.
  
• The new-look sidebar of this blog that includes new links, like the new-look BCTLA webpage under Wikis and Links.
  
• The latest from the various Related Bloggers: Joyce Valenza (SLJ), Phil Bradley, and Kathy Schrock have all made recent blog-posts about WolframAlpha, interesting as extensions of the comments posted here just last week! Blogs like these are where you find out what the "big names" in TL'ship are talking about ... well, unless you take up Twitter-ing.
  
• Twitter: You can mass-monitor tweets with the help of a beta desktop downloadable feature like Tweetdeck set to capture particular twitterings! While I have actually downloaded this, I tend to belong to and attract a group that is following each other but going nowhere! I think we must all be waiting for someone else to tweet (or re-tweet)! Twittering immigrants? No, largely tentative and rendered tweetless.
  
• Learn more about Creative Commons licensing for copyright:
  
  
  

Have a great weekend.

Set an example: Read today

BY JANET STEFFENHAGEN VANCOUVER SUN
The Vancouver Sun
27 Oct 2008

Drop everything and read. That’s what librarians are asking British Columbians to do today at 11 a.m. to mark National School Library Day and deliver a strong signal to children about the importance of literacy. “The message it sends could be so...read more...

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The BCTLA Conference this weekend in Victoria was fantastic. Michele's thank-you speech was inspiring and would make each one of you proud that she is ONE OF OURS! I have to say, after many years of attending these, I heard not one single complaint about any aspect of this year's conference.

The three fantastic workshops I attended, after a session with the book and resource exhibitors, included Karen Lindsay on reading (the same Karen quoted in the newspaper this morning), Dr Barbara McNeil from U of Regina (on engagement and reading with some of our most reluctant), and Susan Juby of Alice, I Think fame (on being retrieved from the edges by a teacher-librarian who recognized in Susan a young woman with a spark of writing brilliance -- she is now Victoria Public Library's "pet writer"!).

The weather, food, accommodations, and company were also amazing. In other delightful aspects of my weekend, including getting caught in Victoria's annual Zombie March, I must thank Gwen and Sylvia for their help in promoting "promoting the new EBSCO-and-World Book multisector database bundle" -- on very short notice at the BCTLA Chapter Councillors' meeting on Saturday! It is very clear that Gwen loves eLibrary and the Culturegrams as well, and Sylvia uses World Book the most.

DEAR

Speaking of Gwen, our first DEAR report has just come in! Look who's reading today with Moberly students. Gwen emailed:

Wally Oppal just became a Friend of the School Library this morning. He also read a book on Divali to a Gr 5 class and talked about the importance of reading every ay. In fact hw suggested they read a novel every two weeks. He will observe DEAR.

Here's news from the mother-ship: Many of our colleagues arrived this morning to find a chocolate bar (thanks, Pat P, for this initiative) from Charlie's that has an attached reminder of National School Library Day and DEAR at 11 am; the chocolate bar reads: sChOOL Libraries -- The Heart (heart-shape) of Literacy. See the word COOL in "school"? I read A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, a book I have Sylvia to thank for ... I have tried several times to find it at Chapters.

Here's ESL Betty on the 4th floor preparing to read The Navigator of New York.

This afternoon, Deb Martel, VBE Aboriginal Administrator, and I headed off to the Coalition-sponsored afternoon celebration of Literacy and School Libraries at Carson Graham in North Vancouver. The Honourable Steven Point spoke to students about the importance of reading. Asked by one what reading had made a difference in his life, His Honour quipped, "Mad Magazine"! In a more serious tone, he talked about the gift of a book that influenced his decision to pursue a career in Law; he was given The Story of My Life by Clarence Darrow. Thanks to CG TL Jennifer Teiche and FN Educator Brad Baker for their organizing of this event. The Catering Class had prepared a wonderful spread. Exhibits included carving in progress and displays of an upcoming play written in-house and aboriginal "reads" from picture books to novels and non-fiction. I also enjoyed the afternoon of chatting with CG administrators Steve Garland and Ray Bodnaruk, as well as North Van TLs Felicity Eadon, Shelagh Martin, and Marilyn Aldworth ... oh, and commenting on the really good food with His Honour. What a treat to be invited.

From the Carson Graham website:

“This is a wonderful opportunity for so many of our students to meet such an inspiring and accomplished person,” says Jennifer Tieche, learning resource/teacher-librarian at Carson Graham. “The Lieutenant Governor embodies the pursuit of learning and appreciation of literature we encourage with our students.”

“We are grateful for this opportunity to showcase the importance of high-quality school library programs,” says Kathryn Shoemaker, chair of the B.C. Coalition for School Libraries. “National School Library Day honours the connection between student success and the essential work of school libraries to promote the freedom to read, foster inquiry and further knowledge.”

DEAR Press Release Today:

PRINCE GEORGE - Education Minister Shirley Bond celebrated National School Library Day Oct. 27 by taking part in the Drop Everything and Read challenge, issued by the B.C. Teacher-Librarians' Association.

"Our family loves to read and has always made it a priority. I am happy to 'drop everything and read' to celebrate national school library day," said Bond. "I have also invited my colleagues around the province to do the same thing."

B.C.'s teacher-librarians challenged everyone in the province to Drop Everything and Read for 20 minutes at 11 a.m. today.... "It's about encouraging young people to read and value literacy," said Karen Lindsay, vice-president of the B.C. Teacher-Librarians' Association. "Studies clearly show that daily silent reading improves vocabulary, spelling, comprehension and much more."

"It is also important to say thank you to teacher-librarians and other educators who work so hard to ensure our students develop a love of reading and excellent literacy skills," said Bond.

Hope you enjoyed today ... and, as DEAR unfolded at the VSB, there was great excitement all across the province as word spread about new ways this initiative was developed or promoted in BC. DEAR has really taken off this year, and we want to hear what your school has done to celebrate National School Library Day. You can report your school's activity using the comment function below (that would be the best use of this Web 2.0 tool) or email me!