Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

I have a month long marathon of craziness!  I very well may have overextended myself.  Here’s  a rough peak at my calendar:

• Wednesday, June 17:
  Another visit to DHS to drop off boxes and personal items used at school–who knows where they will be stored there, but they cannot stay here in the midst of a move and the potential to mix up boxes. Something is always lost in a move, and the fewer boxes to deal with, the better.
  Then an SC DEN Leadership Council online meeting at 7pm to workout my role in the group and plan future online and f2f meetings! Next f2f? I think it will be NECC.
• Thursday, June 18 Webinar  Panel Discussion: “Is There a Place for Media Specialists Who Don’t Know Social Media?”
  Steve Hargadon is hosting a group of School Media Specialists as we hash out the question “Can a media specialist still be relevant and not use 21st century tools? There was a stirring twitter conversation that was loosely threaded around this question some time ago in Twitter, and some really big hitters like Karl Fisch, Darren Draper, and others were pushing the debate full fledged.  I got in on the conversation too, and what has happened as a result is the Classroom 2.0 webinar for June 18.  I’m one of the panelists, along with my LMS friends Buffy Hamilton, Carolyn Foote, and Joyce Valenza.  Here is the planning wiki and here is the session link for 8PM June 18!
  Date: Thursday, June 18th, 2009
  Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
  Duration: 1 hour
  Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed
• Tuesday, June 23
  SCASL Summer Institute 2009: Gaming for Learning! presented by Jared Seay, College of Charleston and Bob Noe, South Carolina ETV (Retired) Bob Noe is considerd a personal friend and online mentor of sorts, so I just HAD to come to this session, which is offered as a preconference workshop at the Upstate technology Conference.
• Wednesday – Thursday, June 24-25 - Upstate Technology Conference 2009
  I’m attending and co-presenting (with Fran Bullington) at this conference which is quickly becoming a favorite in my state of South Carolina.  Best, it’s free.  Icing on the cake for me, a good friend and mentor, Chris Craft, is keynoting the event.  I will be surrounded by other friends like my co-presenter Fran Bullington, and friends MaryAnn Sansonetti, Heather Loy, John Woodring, Jeff McCoy, among many more. I just do not have room to list everyone, but I am so looking forward to our f2f gab sessions and tweetup.
• Saturday, June 27 – July 1
  Saturday my family leaves with me to head to Washington, DC for NECC 2009. I am sitting on two panel like sessions–one a “Library 2.0 Smackdown” of sorts, where we will launch a game of one-ups on implementing 2.0 in our libraries by sharing the many ways it is so doable.  The other panel is for the SIG-MS meeting, and I was asked to replace Sarah Kelly Johns on the panel who had to bow out beacuse of a conflict. I recently found out David Loertscher, Christopher Harris, Marlene Woo-Lun and MaryFriend Shepard are on the panel, which is extremely exciting. I hope to hookup with the DEN folks at NECC as well, and hangout with vendors (like Gale’s Jim Ulsh) that I met at the SLJ Summit last November.  I will miss EdubloggerCon this year, but family time is coming first for once.  They are coming with me to make this our family vacation as well!

When we return, we will focus on a move.  Where, we don’t know yet.  Will it be permanent? Nope.  It will be another transition for all of us.  Oh and lest I forget, I will move my youngest (and last) into his dorm as he prepares to be a USC freshman and work with the football team as a trainer or something like that.  The nest will become rather empy by August, when I start my new high school LMS job.  Summer is certainly flying by.

Image: ‘Someone’s Lost Schedule Book‘
www.flickr.com/photos/88723106@N00/51024419