A Wonderful Day Making A Difference In Broward County With Their Teacher Librarians & Mackin!

Today I had the honor of spending the day in Fort Lauderdale with the teacher librarians and leaders from Broward County Public Schools at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.  

It was such a beautiful venue to kick off a new school year together with the theme....

 Connect, Curate, Create!  School Libraries Transform Learning!  

Lynne Oakvik, the district curriculum supervisor, did an amazing job leading the day.

Robert Runcie, superintendent of Broward County Public Schools and....

chief academic officer, Daniel Gohl, kicked off the day with inspiring messages of the direction the district was heading and the importance of libraries, teacher librarians, and the change they instill.

Next, I spoke with everyone about Transforming Learning....One Voice At A Time.  I love sharing stories about students and the power that their voice has to change education.

Our friends from Mackin Educational Resources teamed up with Broward County School District to bring me to their event, which made the day even more special.

 Bob Dearen,

Mesa Heise, and myself shared how MackinVIA can connect our students, teachers, and school communities to an incredible platform where eBooks, databases, audiobooks, student created content, videos, links and more can come together in supporting our digital collections, teaching and learning.  

Using MackinVIA within our libraries made a difference and changed the way we interacted with digital content and our entire library collection.  

I love how Mesa used Kahoot in the presentation to engage the audience. Kahoot is a game-based digital learning center which definitely makes learning fun!

It made me think that using Kahoot as we kick off a new school year would be a really great way to introduce and refresh the knowledge about MackinVIA with our own students, teachers, and libraries.

At the end of the morning, the teacher librarians visited a technology showcase to view and test our possible technology and uses within their own libraries.  I love how their IT brought this opportunity to them.....What better way to get involved in putting technology into their hands and the hands of their students.

During the event, I enjoyed following the Twitter hashtag #bspslibraries and connecting with everyone.

But nothing compared to the connections I made throughout the day and after the event.  This is a group of very special people with big hearts, lots of ambition, and the passion to make a difference in the lives of the children and families they work with everyday.  

Thank you Broward County for inviting me to share the day with all of you.  And thank you Mackin for making it happen.  

Together we can all make a difference.