CSLA at CATE Conference Exhibits

CSLA had a booth at the California Association of Teachers of English (CATE) Conference in Santa Clara on February 20-21, 2009. Attendance was down to about 650, thanks to the economy. Of those, 30 teachers stopped by the booth each of the two days, yielding 60 conversations.

We promoted 3 topics, accompanied by handouts:

1. California School Libraries Make a Difference (Dissertation research by CSLA member Dr. Doug Achterman)


2. Classroom Learning 2.0 (CSLA 2.0 Team professional development tutorial.)


3. CSLA Good Ideas and CSLA Journal

Topic #1 was a call for library advocacy. Some teachers bragged about their teacher librarians and librarian staff, while others expressed sorrow about not having a librarian or about to lose their librarian. One teacher asked for an extra copy of the handout for putting on the staff bulletin board (great idea!)

Topic #2 was "good news" about a fun, free way to learn the web 2.0 tools. CSLA's Classroom Learning 2.0 is a timely gift to teachers. We got a dozen enthusiasic thank-yous for the inviation to participate in our online tutorial. Some also said they planned to share it with their colleagues and take it together.

Topic #3 CSLA's Good Ideas and Journal were of interest when the discussions got into collaboration with school librarians and how we promoted/shared good ideas.

FYI: All but one CATE exhibitor offered print-based products. The one technology-based product was for studying Shakespeare individually or as a 2-person team. It was web-based and looked good from a scholarly perspective, not an action-pacted eGame. Apparently, many English teachers told the vendor that because they didn't have any or many Internet workstations in the classroom that it might be better to contact the school librarians because they had computer labs and broadband access.