SLANZA Wellington Region Workshop Sept 2011

She has me fired up now!

This is the comment of one of the participants who attended our annual Saturday morning professional development in September. The themes were “Advocating for your school library” and E-learning. Forty seven people attended the workshop and went away with many new ideas for how to promote their libraries (Donna Watt and Miriam Tuohy) as well as issues around technology enhanced learning (Paul du Temple, Jason Murphy and Tom Avery).

Donna Watt as a keynote speaker was a definite drawcard. Donna is the communications person on the National Executive of SLANZA and has had many years experience in school libraries. Her message was appropriate to both primary and secondary school library staff and teachers. We recommend that she is invited to share her advocacy ideas to members around the country. Miriam Tuohy (Nat Exec member) ran a workshop after Donna’s keynote and reinforced the ideas, giving relevant and useful advice for untrained library staff who are just starting out in a primary school. Remember you are not alone in this work!

Here is some more feedback on the presentations.

• Lots of ideas/approaches to investigate. Change my approach – accentuate the positive. Emphasis on how I work and what I do. 
• So many practical ideas to take back to school. 
• Great speaker, have gained some good ideas to work on. 
• This was absolutely wonderful! 
• Very inspiring. Really made me think how our library is perceived by others. 
• Excellent speaker. Challenging. 
• Practical ideas for e-books in the school library environment. 
• Excellent. Helped a lot to understand how all this works. 

Thanks again to our presenters. Contact your local SLANZA regional rep to organize Donna Watt for a professional development meeting in 2012.

Michele Whiting
SLANZA National Executive representative
Wellington region