National Executive update 15 November 2015

There has been much going on in the couple of weeks since my last update. It’s a busy time of year for all of us, with most school library staff doing their annual stock-take, and senior sign-out for high schools. I’ve enjoyed seeing so many invitations to SLANZA end-of-year celebrations going out recently too, I wish I could go to all of them!

Here’s the latest news from National Exec:
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Conference proceedings updated

A final large batch of presentations from our Conference has gone up on the SLANZA website. Alongside these, we also have some additional material - a document prepared by Steph Ellis with follow-up readings, links and information about the apps and ideas presented by each of our keynote speakers. ​Many thanks to Steph for creating and sharing this document. All these files are available now from the conference proceedings page.
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Collected magazine

The next issue of Collected magazine is starting to come together with many submissions already received. Thank you to those who have written articles for this conference themed issue, and also to our team of proof-readers who assist Greig (our Editor) with getting the magazine ready for publication. You can still submit content for this issue, too. The final date for articles or book reviews to reach us is this coming Thursday, November 19th. Information about writing for the magazine is available on our website, and you can email articles, photos, or book reviews directly to [email protected] 
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Professional Development discussion

This week Sandi (PD Team Leader) has kicked off the first of our regular PD discussions in SLANZA’s Google+ community. Our chosen text for the inaugural discussion is R David Lankes’ free eBook “Expect More”. David presented a keynote session at LIANZA’s conference last week, and you can watch the video of that presentation (and others) online. To take part in our discussion group, you’ll need to join the G+ community first - over 100 of our members have joined so far. There has been some really interesting sharing and commenting already, relating to the first couple of chapters of Expect More. It’s not too late to join us, if you’d like to be part of this stimulating and thought-provoking conversation!
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Ongoing work

Members of the National Executive are continuing to participate in various fora:

• the NZEI Support Staff joint initiative reference group - currently addressing the question “What are the potential roles of support staff in a Community of Learning?” More info about the Communities of Learning is available on the NZEI website.
• the National Library Services to Schools pilot group which meets on Monday November 16th - more information is due to be communicated to schools after this meeting; and the reference group which meets next on December 1st. We will do our best to help ensure that information gets to library staff asap, and to provide what practical support we can as we work towards the next stage of the transformation.

We are also working on our strategic plan and the resulting work plan, our budget for the coming year, and preparing to open nominations for our next SLANZA President - I will have more info to share about these next week.

Contacting National Executive

Please do get in touch with me ([email protected]), or with your local representative on the National Executive if there is anything mentioned here that you'd like to discuss, or if there are any other matters you'd like our help or input with. We'd love to hear from you!

Miriam Tuohy