Webinars for School Library Staff – Part 7 in the Professional Learning series
Well, we have finally reached the final part of my Professional Learning Series. What started as one blog post to share my favourite places to find and connect with professional learning, turned into 7 long posts. I did mention I’m a bit addicted to professional learning, right? This time, I’m going to be talking about courses and conferences. This is where the money you saved from finding free resources from my last 6 posts is going to come in handy because courses and conferences can be expensive.
I love going to conferences. Maybe it’s the free stash you get at the booths, maybe it’s the chance to catch up with other library staff, or maybe it’s the intense learning and inspiring that gets squished into one or two days. Whatever the case, you’ll find me making any excuse to attend as many courses or conferences as I can. I’m going to share some of my favourite places to learn about new courses and conferences and luckily some of them are free! I’ve love to hear about your experiences or fav courses and conferences to attend, so please do share in the comments.
National Education Summit
The National Education Summit is an annual event at both Brisbane and Melbourne. Each event features a school library conference, which is awesome. Find more details on the NES website.
AASL Conference
One of the biggest school library conferences is the biannual AASL conference in the United States. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a virtual or hybrid option yet for their main conference, but they do run other conferences throughout the year. It’s my goal to attend one of these conferences in the US one day. Find our more
Your state or national school library conference
Many state and national school library organisation run annual or biannual conferences. Many, due to the pandemic, have turned to virtual or hybrid conferences, so we can now attend conferences from around the world. Visit your local school library organisation for details.
LinkedIn Learning Courses
Want to increase your design skills, develop a website for your school library or upskill in other areas? I’ve found LinkedInLearning has an amazing list of courses. You need to pay a monthly subscription, but I know the State Library of Queensland offers free access to their members, so check out your state library to see if they offer the same.
Book Club Course
I think I might have mentioned Megan Daley a few times in this series. What can I say? I’m a fan. Megan offers a very reasonable course via her website Children’s Books Daily on running book clubs. Check out her site here.
Local Literary Festivals
Photo taken at the 2019 Remarkable Women Conference held at St Rita’s Catholic College Read Like A Girl event
I’m lucky to have some fantastic local literary festivals that are run in my area. With a focus on reading and writing, they are a great opportunity to connect with authors and illustrators and book professionals. Many also include professional learning sessions for school librarians. Here are a few of my favourite local events.
Litfest2444 (held in NSW but went virtual in 2020).
Short Courses
There are a range of short courses available from a variety of providers. Check out FutureLearn or Ed2Go.
Leave a Reply