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Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present for two NCLA events. The first was for Everybody Teaches: Creating effective online e-learning experiences
with Beth Filar Williams and Amy Archambault.

I got to know Amy late last year, as she’s a former Instructional Designer who is now working on a MLIS at UNCG. We knew we had to collaborate on something. Then, I found out she worked with Beth, who I’ve known for a while as the Distance Learning Librarian at UNCG. They were working on an instructional design preconference for NCLA, which was a lot like the preconference Kaeley and I put on for ACRL a while back, so it was a natural fit for a way for the three of us to get to work together.

It was a fun event, and the crowd was quite engaged. We had planned enough content to get through half the day, but as chatty as everyone was, it could have been a full day preconference. That’s just the type of crowd you want! We focused our workshop on creating elearning opportunities, which as you might know, is on my mind a lot these days. It was nice to have the chance to work with others who are also in the thick of that type of work from all across the state (and one attendee from out of state)!

The other event I participated in was a panel on ebook readers. Mark Sanders, from ECU, spoke about the Nook Color, Lynda Kellam, from UNCG, spoke about the Kindle family of devices, I spoke about the eink Nooks and Sony, and Amy Harris, also from UNCG, spoke on the iPad. Those of you who know me know that I love a well designed slidedeck. However, this was just a panel, so in our email discussion we talked about just speaking about our devices. Little did I know that everyone else had decided to make one! So I spoke off the cuff, which was a really good experience for me in not making assumptions as well as helping me realize that it is possible to speak coherently and entertainingly without slides. Hopefully it went okay for those in the room. My favorite part of the panel was an idea of Amy’s. At the end we all had to make a pitch for why our device was the best. It was fun hearing the reasons (or not) each person had for their devices, and it helped me reremember why I loved the Nook in the first place (I’ve been mighty tempted by the Kindle these days).

It was a great conference overall, too. I got to ride in and out with Gretchen one day, which was fun to catch up. I ran into countless friends from library school, the NCLA Leadership Institute, and even from LITA. People were energized and full of ideas. Next time, I hope to attend the entireconference.