Visit to the MAME-33 Annual Conference

On Thursday morning, October 26th, I had the pleasure of attending the opening session of the 2006 annual conference of the Michigan Association for Media in Education (MAME) in Grand Rapids. The crowd was quite animated and welcoming for such an early morning start! I've been working with a large group of media specialists and media center library enthusiasts for a little over a year now, facilitating their work in creating an online and possibly cd/dvd marketing piece to tout the importance of well-funded, well-equipped school library media centers and the need for experienced staff to make sure they are utilized to their fullest to ensure the success of our students in Michigan's schools. Additionally, we've begun work on reviewing and revising the benchmarks that were published in 2003, to update them and to establish some sort of certification process by which the Library of Michigan and others might endorse the benchmarks and the library media centers that meet them in the future. The work is not completed on either of these initiatives but work continues apace.

After commenting on the progress we've been making in these areas, I was glad to have the opportunity to stay to listen to the keynote speaker, David Warlick. He's a very engaging speaker and a real supporter of school libraries! His comments about technology and how today's young people use it to interact, socialize, learn, and especially to create are both challenging and inspiring. He rightly urges us to go beyond the challenge of simply providing the information (it's already out there), but to work to ensure that students know how to evaluate and use the vast body of information that is available to them to create their own new ideas. I look forward to hearing David speak again sometime, as his presentation was so full of thought-provoking perspectives and suggestions for working with today's students. Truly, it's not about the technology but about what social, educational, and creative avenues it opens up.