Professional Development Day June 2008

Another successful professional development day was held at Dapto High School today.

Sessions were provided for primary and secondary teacher librarians as well as library assistants. Guest speakers included Kate Colley, Therese Coogan, Michelle Macdonald and author James Roy.

Photos from the day are available on the PD page.

Registration for Professional Development Day May 2008

Here is the Registration form for our Professional Development Day. Please assist us by getting your form in as soon as possible.

Library Assistants are invited to attend the whole day again - please use one form per person.

Also a reminder that ISLA is running a networking afternoon meeting on Wednesday, 21st May at Wollongong PS.

Please check our ISLA calendar for more upcoming events.

2008

The 2008 membership details are now available on our Membership page.

One of the benefits of joining ISLA is that there will be other, smaller meetings and get-togethers for ISLA members during the year.

At our first meeting of the year, we drew up a calendar for the year. We made a decision to include informal networking opportunities by scheduling a meeting once a term. There will be no formal agenda for these meetings. We feel that there is still a great need for teacher librarians and library assistants to share experiences over a cuppa.

Following is a list of activities planned for the year. Please note the following dates in your diary:

Term 1:

Tuesday, 8th April: 6.30pm. Dinner at Top Choice in Wollongong (Corner of Market and Corrimal Streets).

Term 2:

Wednesday, 21st May: Networking afternoon tea. 4pm at Wollongong Public School library.

Wednesday, 11th June: Professional Development Day at Dapto High School.

Term 3:

Thursday, 7th August. Networking afternoon tea. 4pm at Wollongong Public School library. Great chance to discuss and share any Book Week ideas.

Term 4:

Professional Development Day: date and venue to be advised.

Wednesday, 5th November. Networking afternoon tea. 4pm at Wollongong Public School library.

Office Bearers 2008

President: Margaret Cooper

Vice President: Jane Pretty

Minutes Secretary: Fiona McKay

Correspondence Secretary: Jenny Kay

Treasurer: Celia Owen

Primary Rep:

Secondary Rep: Di Ridley

Non-Government Schools Rep: Trish Atkinson

Web Master: Wendy Dawson

Presidents Report 2007

ISLA has had a very successful year in 2007. It has now been three years since we started organising Professional Development Days for teacher librarians and their school assistants. It is evident that we have established a reputation for providing relevant, needs-based, practical information to assist teacher librarians to improve their teaching and management practices in Illawarra schools as attendance figures have risen this year.

Our first Professional Development Day for the year was held on the 19th June at Fairy Meadow Demonstration School. A very comprehensive program was offered which included Victoria Clay speaking about engaging boys in the library; Joy Lawn with her excellent ideas for using the Shortlisted books for Bookweek; June Wall who presented her “All my own work” workshop to Secondary teacher librarians and two local presenters in Brendan Barr and Sharon McGuiness who showed us many interesting web sites to use with students. To conclude the day, Debora Abela proved to be a very entertaining and energetic author. A total of 116 people attended the day.

In addition we organised an after school information session at Keiraville PS with Doug Jenkins to explain the changes that we would see when Thin Client was installed on computers in Government schools. The large turnout indicated that we were providing vital information to our teacher librarians to help them prepare for the changeover to Thin Client.

Our second Professional Development Day was held on 23rd October at Shellharbour Public School. This was the first time that Library Assistants were invited to attend the whole day. There were some practical workshops at the start of the day, in which Primary and Secondary teacher librarians were able to share their teaching and management tips followed by two sessions presented by Kevin Hennah. Kevin’s ideas for transforming the physical aspects of the library to make it more appealing to library users was a big hit, with many of us going back to our schools and making changes to improve our libraries to better meet the needs of our students and teachers. The day concluded with local author, Bill Condon giving us some samples of his work and a taste of his dry sense of humour.

The feedback, together with an attendance figure of 124, proves that we are providing the right sort of assistance and networking opportunities that teacher librarians require. These days would not be possible without the dedication, support and efforts of our ISLA executive and planning committee.

We also made small changes to our constitution to update it and make it more relevant to current needs. We changed the name from Illawarra School Librarians Association to the Illawarra School Libraries Association, as a way of catering for a broader membership base to include library assistants and others who are interested in school librarianship. Our current membership numbers 53.

An important achievement for the year was the launch of our own professional website -www.isla.org – thanks to Wendy Dawson. Establishing our own website gives us more opportunities to provide a worthwhile service to our members.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the privilege of being President in 2007. I think ISLA is in a very healthy state thanks to the teacher librarians who have selflessly given their own precious time to contribute to our organisation this year.

Margaret Cooper
President 2007

ISLA Annual General Meeting 2008

The ISLA Annual General Meeting will be held at Bellambi Public School, Owen Park Road, Bellambi (Phone 4284 8666) on Thursday, 21st February, 2008 at 4.00pm.

All positions will be declared vacant and elections will be held for a new committee for 2008. A new committee will need to be formed to plan our Professional Development Days for the year. If you have any suggestions for topics for the days please bring them along to the meeting.

Agenda Items for discussion
Review of 2007
Social activities for the year
Applying for an ABN
General Business

If you are unable to attend the meeting, but would like to have a say in any of these matters or nominate yourself for a position, then contact me before the meeting by phone or email.

Margaret Cooper
President ISLA 2007

Sharing Session Discussion Notes

Margaret Cooper (President of ISLA) has compiled a summary of the discussion points from the sharing session at the October professional development day.

These notes include ideas covering many topics including:

OASIS

Internet

PRC

Organisation

Borrowing

RFF

Stocktake

Plus many others

If you would like to download a pdf copy click the link below.

Sharing session discussion report

Wendy Dawson

Congratulations

Congratulations to the organising committee for another very successful Professional Development Day in October 2007.

Click on the PD link to see photos from the day.

October Professional Development Day

The next Professional Development day is planned for Tuesday 23rd October at Shellharbour PS.

For more information and to download the Registration form see the PD page.

Presidents Report 2006

It has now been two years since I was voted in as President of ISLA. We have achieved a lot in that time, but there are still adjustments to be made. We have concentrated heavily on the Professional Development side of teacher librarianship in the Illawarra, but we have not really done much to promote the networking and social side of the Association.

Achievements
In Term 1 we ran an informal afternoon gathering at both Shellharbour PS and Bellambi PS to support new and not so new teacher librarians in the district who had expressed a desire for more relaxed networking opportunities.

We have again been able to offer two whole-day professional development opportunities to teacher librarians and their clerical assistants. A team of library assistants led by Judy Brooks, were inspired to take on the role of organising the professional activities for library clericals after a meeting with Jennifer Dyer at Woonona HS.

Our first Professional Development Day was held on June 8 at Woonona High School. Our speakers included Tom March, Joy Lawn and Steven Herrick. One hundred and eleven teacher librarians and library assistants attended this most successful day.

Our second Professional development Day was held on November 9 at Cringila Public School. Our focus for the day was the role of the teacher librarian. Our speakers included Amanda Smithers, Sue Lacey and the author-illustrator team of Lisa Shanahan and Emma Quay. We had an attendance of approximately ninety on this day. Once again, those who attended gave positive feedback and helpful suggestions for the future.

We did not have a Book Week Dinner this year, but did have a Christmas Dinner in November, with local author Kerrie O’Connor as our special guest. It was good to see many of the non-school based members attend the Christmas Dinner.

Future Directions
I think we still have some fine tuning to do to make our association better. In addition to continuing with Professional Development Opportunities, I would like to see some informal afternoon meetings. I would also like to see improvements in electronic communication to schools and their members, through a website especially designed to keep members informed and to publish photos and news from ISLA activities. We have attempted to start on these matters in 2006 but will need to work harder this year if we hope to achieve them.

Margaret Cooper
President 2006

New ISLA Website

Welcome to the new ISLA site.

We hope you enjoy our new website.

If you have any comments or suggestions for the website please email

wendy.dawson@education.nsw.gov.au