Debbie’s presentation at AASL 2011, “Power Searching: Demystifying Popular Search Engines and Getting Quality Research from Everyday Tools,” was a big hit. Read an overview about the session in School Library Journal:

…librarians packed into the workshop with their laptops in hand to hear Debbie Abilock, co-founder of Palo Alto, CA-based bibliography software company Noodle Tools, Natasha Bergson-Michelson, an instructional librarian at Google, and Jole Seroff, the director of library and information services at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, give essential tips and answer questions about ways librarians—and their students—can refine their skills to get the most out of online searches.

What are the most popular search engines? Google, Bing, Blekko,DuckDuckGo, and Wolfram Alpha, but many of us—including librarians—lack the savvy to teach and use them to their full potential. But learning about a handful of commands can transform a strong searcher into a masterful one.

“Creative thinking makes good searching,” says Abilock, who told librarians to go back to the basics by thinking about how a successful reference interview is conducted. The fundamental questions that librarians ask patrons to help them define their informational needs also holds true for online searches, whether they’re fact-based ones, such as “What’s the population of Chicago?,” or inquiry-based questions, like “Why did the population there increase between a certain period of time?…”

Read more at…”AASL Conference 2011: Unlocking the Art of Search Engines“

Debbie will be speaking at AASL (American Association of School Librarians) 2011 National Conference, October 27-30. Following are the sessions she will be presenting.

Power Searching: Demystifying Popular Search Engines and Getting Quality Research from Everyday Tools (BYOL*)

Preconference session – Thurs., Oct. 27th, 8:30am – 12:00pm
Presenters: Debbie Abilock, Natasha Bergson-Michelson, Jole Seroff

Search engines we love them or hate them, but how many of us have the savvy to teach and use their full potential? Popular search engines have a handful of commands that transform a strong searcher into a masterful one. But only when combined with refined research methods focused on identification, visualization, iteration, and pursuit do students (and teachers) truly transform their confidence, competence, and engagement in undertaking research, both online and off.

Not in My Library! Self-Censorship Alive and Well

Concurrent session – Friday, Oct. 28, 8:00AM-9:15AM, Room M100 F/G

Who hasn’t struggled with what resources we should provide and what we dare not select? School librarians are champions of intellectual freedom. Easy to say, not so easy to do. We strive to select a balanced collection that reflects the needs and values of our communities. What about our own strongly-held beliefs versus the Code of Ethics? Where does informed selection end and censorship begin? Share an honest discussion about the sensitive topic of self-censorship.

• Debbie Abilock, Consultant, Author
• Helen Adams, Retired Public School Librarian
• Catherine Beyers, Library Media Specialist, Southern Bluffs Elementary School
• Alice Bryant, Instructional Librarian, Harpeth Hall School Library
• Carrie Gardner, assistant professor, Clarion University

Target Audience: School Librarians, Library Supervisors, Higher Education, Students, Public Librarians Working with Children and Youth

Tricky but Not Impossible – Smart Inclusion Strategies for School Librarians

Grade Level: K-3, 4-6, Middle/Junior, High
Saturday, Oct. 29th, 1:00PM-2:15PM, Room 200A

You bet it’s a challenge to give exceptional students the attention and resources they require. You’ve a room full of students, no aide – and the homeroom teacher is on a prep period. This session will provide an overview of helpful information on exceptionalities, plus real-life examples of inclusive learning in schools just like yours. In roundtable discussions, attendees will share their concerns about effectively differentiating to meet the needs of all students.

• Debbie Abilock, Educator
• Patti Foerster, Librarian, Vaughn Occupational High School

Target Audience: School Librarians, Classroom Teachers, Library Supervisors, Curriculum Specialists, Students, Public Librarians Working with Children and Youth

Debbie will be presenting a workshop on October 5, 2011 at the Florida Association for Media in Education (FAME) in Orlando, Florida.

A School-wide Lens on Evaluation: Who Knows What?

Young people need evaluation skills in a participatory digital world. Yet, they ditch our checklists and forget our mini-lessons in the dizzying stew of click-and-go wikified information. Well-publicized examples of doctored data and journalistic fabrications remind us that “truth” is complicated. Who is an authority when everyone is an author? How do culture and context impact evaluation? Can technology show us who to trust? We will apply new research to the age-old problems of evaluating information and will devise strategies for students (and teachers) in school and for “real.”

Please see http://www.floridamedia.org/?page=Conf_Workshops.

Just back from Shanghai in April where she presented a series of keynotes and workshops at the ACAMIS Spring Conference (Concordia International School, Shanghai), Debbie is off again to Istanbul, Turkey (Enka Schools), where she is presenting at the ECIS Librarian’s Conference.

ACAMIS Presentations:

Who Knows What — and How Do I Know It? A Workshop on Evaluation
Young people need evaluation skills in a participatory digital world. Yet, they ditch our checklists and forget our mini-lessons in the dizzying stew of click-and-go wikified information. Well-publicized examples of doctored data and journalistic fabrications remind us that “truth” is complicated. Who is an authority when everyone is an author? How do culture and context impact evaluation? Can technology show us whom to trust? Strategies for students (and teachers) in school and for “real.” The second half is an interactive workshop to explore practical challenges of teaching information evaluation.

No More Cat and Mouse: What Research, Practice and Common Sense Can Tell Us about Teaching Students to Do Honest Academic Work
Are you playing cat-and-mouse with student plagiarists? Do they resist taking notes (“I can remember this stuff word-for-word”), then print out everything – but still forget to attribute quotes or ideas? If students describe research as “smushing stuff” with a bibliography, why wouldn’t they take short cuts? They’ll tell you that Wikipedia is common knowledge and, besides, you just don’t attribute “mashups”anymore. We’ll take a look at what the research says has the greatest impact on student learning, drives motivation, and builds reading comprehension. Then we’ll examine some student work, and identify curricular designs and teaching strategies that will ring true to your students.

Teaching Visual Literacy
Decoders, fluent readers and finally expressive readers and writers – these stages apply to visual literacy as well as to reading print. In an image-drenched world, we’ll consider the “rhetorical situation,” examine some signs and symbols, and see how point of view results from the interaction of the reader, the audience and the medium. We’ll consider some emerging issues, such as visual plagiarism, and practice some reading and teaching strategies, such as determine authority and bias using photographs.

ECIS Presentations:

Cultural Competence and New Authority
We know that cultural competence is critical as our students traverse the global landscape, analyzing, comparing, evaluating and interpreting multiple media from various disciplines and countries. How does culture and context impact students’ evaluation of authority? Does collective evaluation offer insights on whom to trust? We’ll look at ways to develop culturally-literate evaluation skills among our students.

Social Wisdom, Social Ignorance: Critical Thinking and Evaluation in the Age of the Celebrated Crowd
“The opposite of critical thinking is uncritical thinking” (Ira Winn). When we stop thinking, we open ourselves to scams and fraudsters. Hype and spin become the new truth – and everyone’s an expert. Young people need evaluation skills in a participatory digital world. Well-publicized examples of “everyone” as authorities, doctored data and journalistic fabrications remind us that “truth” is complicated. But if it’s taught at all, source evaluation and critical thinking are often presented in a vacuum of artificial situations and hoax web sites which are divorced from our everyday experience or the school curricula. Yet, in their “real” world, students (and teachers) ditch our checklists and forget our mini-lessons in the dizzying stew of click-and-go wikified information. In this highly interactive workshop, we’ll be looking at, discussing, and doing a host of different activities which can be used in lessons on evaluation and critical-thinking. Don’t stop thinking!

Debbie will be giving a keynote and conducting one session at the Ventura County Office of Education tomorrow, October 3rd. Then its on to Portland on Thursday, October 9th for the OASL/WLMA Conference, where she’ll be doing one of the extended sessions (9 am – 12 pm).

Who Knows What …and How Do I Know it?
Students make judgments about authority in their everyday lives, but don’t necessarily transfer this to evaluating online sources. We’ll look at the relationship between trust, expertise and authority in the real world, the academic world and in the new permeable Web where learners expect to create information and construct knowledge, not just consume it.

Beyond Cut-and-Paste: No More Cat and Mouse, Revisited
You’ve been telling your students not to cut-and-paste, but are you teaching the specific skills they need to avoid plagiarism? Do your students (and do you?) know the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing? Do they know how and when to quote a source directly? Do they recognize common knowledge? Do they understand how to develop their own opinions and voice? Constructivist, student-centered teaching ideas and documentation strategies for your information literacy curriculum.

Debbie will be presenting at IASL in Berkeley today (Sunday, Aug. 3) from 1-4 PM.

Seeding the Oyster: Leadership Through Dialogue
Marilyn Kimura and Debbie Abilock, Room 104
You’ll recognize the names of these discussion groups: Socratic seminar, Literary Club, Harkness Table, deliberative dialogue, professional study group. Yet few librarians have used them as advocacy tools to build learning communities in support of literacy and collaboration. We will provide an opportunity for you to experience several types of inquiry discussions using provocative texts, photographs and film clips. As you learn discussion, reflection, and facilitation skills, you will see how nurturing inquiry and intellectual dispositions can seed your leadership in the school community.

Debbie spoke in two AASL/ISS sponsored sessions at the ALA Annual Conference last week, one on visual information literacy and another about ethics in a Web 2.0 environment. Thanks for attending, and to those of you who came by to say hi!

Visual Literacy Ain’t Just Watching Ads: Decoders, fluent readers and finally expressive readers and writers — these stages apply to visual literacy as well as to reading print. In an image-drenched world, we’ll look at the rhetorical situation of an image, examine some signs and symbols, and see how point of view is created by interaction of the reader, audience, and medium. We’ll consider some emerging issues and teaching strategies for various types of images.

Ethics in the Age of Web 2.0: The ALA Code of Ethics for Librarians has served school and youth services librarians for almost 70 years. How has it supported the intellectual freedom of school and public library youthful users? Does it continue to offer us the guidance we need to face the new challenges and new roles we face in a socially networked, repaidly changing digital world? What needs updating? What’s missing? What has aged well? A panel of experts, library educators, and practitioners will discuss ethical issues associated with social technologies, privacy, intellectual property, cesorship, access to information, leveling and labeling a collection, and selection.

Debbie will be giving the keynote at this year’s Maryland Assoc. of School Librarians Conference, held on October 18th and 19th in Ocean City, MD.

http://www.mdedmedia.org/MASLConferenceFlyer2007Color.pdf

Debbie will also be presenting in a conference session: Beyond Cut and Paste (Session 2, conference room 5/6). In addition, Anita Anderson, media specialist at Thomas S. Wootton High School (MCPS), will be holding a session on… NoodleTools! That talk is being help during Session 3 in conference room 4.

Debbie will keynote this year’s NYCSLS Annual Fall Conference on Oct. 26th (Secondary) and Oct. 27th (Elementary) at Queens College.

Description: From Novice to Expert: Teaching Inquiry Research will identify some misconceptions about the research process that are common among naive thinkers of all ages. Debbie will suggest ways to design learning experiences and develop student questioning skills so that novices confront their (mostly unexamined) ideas about research and develop a complex understanding of the process.

Debbie will also do a note-taking workshop on both days. For information, please see the link from the NYC Department of Education library services Web page. Hope to see you there!

Debbie will be presenting at the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy this Saturday, October 7th @ 9:00 AM.

Beyond Cut-and-Paste: No More Cat and Mouse, Revisited

Description: K-12 librarians teach note-taking as a discrete set of skills like learning to paraphrase or quote, and to document sources correctly. However, aligned with online and print reading comprehension strategies and inquiry learning, the teaching of note-taking and note-making offers rich opportunities for students to think critically and reflect across the entire information literacy process.

Conference Web site