So you are attending the 2022 OELMA Conference…THEN WHAT? 

Your administrators and fellow educators and librarian PLN can also benefit from your time at conference:

One important aspect of attending professional development is to bring back to your school and share, apply, and reflect upon what you learned with others. As we prepare for our upcoming OELMA conference, I wanted to share some tips that I have learned over the years after every OELMA conference that may be beneficial for you and also help “make your case” with administrators in future years to attend. 

1. Take notes on every session you attend at conference in a running Google Doc. They can be as simple or detailed as you wish. You can include links, “aha” moments or phrases, book titles, and more. This also comes in handy in the future when you recall something that was shared at conference and want to re-share it, but may not be exactly sure what it was. All of the links and information are stored in one doc for future access. 

2. As you attend the sessions at conference, if you think of a fellow educator or librarian that should know about what you are learning about, email them and share with them the content! We are always better together when we learn together! Tweet out your takeaways, share pictures, and tag your PLN that would benefit from what you are learning. Use the #OELMA22 for tagging within your social media posts! 

3. Email your administrators right after conference about what you learned. When you get back home from conference, send a quick email to my administrators with a short recap of conference and to share what you really enjoyed about the sessions, authors, and networking. Try to focus it on things we are doing within the school as well so it ties in neatly. Thank them for allowing me to attend too. 

4. Share with your fellow staff everything you can all year long! Whether it is in email, face-to-face, newsletters, or bits and pieces as the year goes on, I share those topics, books, websites, etc. that I learned about at conference. 

5. Tech Tip: The free Google Keep app on your cell phone is a great app to store pictures, screenshots, lists, links, and more if you are looking for an easy conference app for your phones. You can even share items with others within Google Keep. 

Image from: https://www.whistleout.com.au/MobilePhones 

See you soon at conference and if you have any other tips, please email me at oelma.awojtecki@gmail.com and I will add them to this blog post!