Sydney Region TL Network Meeting - Term 2

Today was my first meeting as a member of the Sydney Region TL Network. I was previously a member of the South-Western Sydney Region, but I really liked what the Sydney Region has been doing in their meetings so when they asked me to join I said yes!

Today's meeting was filled with a variety of sessions that really touched on what it is to be a TL in 2009.

First off we had a session with Colleen Foley, from School Libraries and Information Literacy. Colleen spoke to us regarding School Libraries 21C, which is an opportunity for professionals to discuss the vision for school libraries in the 21st Century, including the overriding questions:

1. The future of school libraries
2. The school libraries of the future
3. What it takes to get there?

She also spoke about the L4L (Laptops for Learning) program, that is getting rolled out later this year when Year 9 students are the first to receive their laptops on the first day of Term 3, 2009.


Next, we had a presentation from Lena Arena on Interactive Whiteboards which allowed us to see some of the great stuff available to use as teaching tools. This document is a list of the majority of sites that Lena offered us.





After a much needed morning tea break, we had Lisa and Deidre speaking about CURLS which appears to be a Department of Education version of delicious. From what I can gather, it is only accessible if you sign into the NSW DET Portal so I'm quite happy to stay with delicious for now, or maintain both. If you're interested in my delicious, click here.

Deidre spoke briefly about Vokis, which seemed to have some potentially great uses as a teaching/learning tool. I had a go at making one, although as it says, I'm not sure if it looks or sounds like me! (It takes a few seconds to load, so be patient!)

We then broke up into Primary/Secondary groups. I found this session particularly helpful as besides the NSWTL network, I don't get much opportunity to network with other secondary librarians. Much of our discussion was centered on admin support (how much, how often) and the advent of the use of Interactive Whiteboards.

Overall, this meeting was great for networking and to hear what others were doing in their school libraries. As a beginning TL I still feel a bit lost, and getting a bit of direction is really helpful!