Reflections on the 50 & Fabulous MSLA Conference

I attended the MSLA Conference this past Sunday and had an information-packed and inspiring day. It was fabulous to see familiar faces and to finally meet some folks whose names pop up on the MSLA listserv and whose work I admire. In between sessions, there were vendors to visit and conversations to be had with fellow librarians and students. We discussed book recommendations for particular kiddoes, reading motivation programs, book fairs vs. book swaps, and more. It was thoroughly exhausting in the best way!

Here are my take-aways and reflections on the sessions I attended:

Keynote

Featuring: Kwame Mbalia

Memorable moments:

·       Has his own imprint: Freedom Fire (with Disney)

·       “Milestones need to be celebrated”

·       “You will always have an audience of one”

·       “Why don’t we have book character crossovers anymore?” (Nancy Drew / Hardy Boys)

·       His HS librarian Polly Partain (sounds like a superhero name) – “She collected antisocial ducklings.” Through her, he discovered horror genre. Goosebumps, Fear Street

·       “When you receive the right book at the right moment, what a profound impact that can be.”

·       Lover of romance novels. “There should be more Neanderthal romance.” (Clan of the Cave Bear shout out!)

·       Wanted to write a book where a library is the centerpiece; where the library is Narnia or Middle Earth. First book: The Floating Library of Timbuktu. Middle grade/YA crossover – it’s what got Kwame an agent.  Never got published.

·       Does his writing in local library.

Actionable items:

·       Kwame’s reflection on his time in San Francisco and not being able to communicate with the Spanish speaking population reminds me that I need to order ASL dictionary and book(s)

·       Look up “Library Wars” – Manga

·       Order Mbalia / Entrada Kelly co-written YA romcom: On Again Awkward Again / April 15 publishing date

·       Series recommended to Mbalia: Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

 

Student using AI to develop a research inquiry question (with hallucinations!) developed on Canva dreamlab

AI and the Research Process

Featuring: Laurie Taylor and Molly Wong

Memorable moments:

·       AI has ethical considerations: environmental, bias, misinformation

·       We need our students to experience the friction of learning. AI strives to get rid of the friction. Some students need the friction lowered a little bit in order to succeed.

·       “Use AI in a guided way to reduce friction and facilitate learning”

·       A suggestion of where to use AI in research is in Gale’s topic finder: eases process for finding topics to write about. Can energize HS students at start of research process.

·       Diffit Helps narrow down broad topics. Free. Designed for teachers. Generates scaffolding for different reading levels/grade levels. Translation feature. Helps with building a good research question.

·       Right Question Institute – helps students craft open questions to guide research. (reduces friction)

·       Flint AI – K-12 school. Crafting a research question. Teachers can moderate how students are using the AI. Free for up to 80 users. Molly’s school is moving forward with this tool next year.

·       “Make sure any AI tool you use is transparent about its sources. Because it’s not transparent about its sources, don’t use ChatGPT.” Generative AI should have/include in-text citations and bibliographical info.

·       Perplexity and Perplexity deep research – for 13+ year olds. Can choose sources (academic vs. web vs. social)

·       JSTOR Beta – AI summary appears at the top of the article. You can ask what are the three most important points? What sentences back up these points? Powerful for providing keywords to search.

·       In my turn and talk conversation with PJ Feynmen, she explained her middle school’s commitment to the CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) method for middle school research. Where students get stuck is thinking they’ve provided evidence for the claim when they really haven’t.

·       MLA style guide does guide through the process of citing AI

·       “Use Boolean search for AI tools. Be bossy.” – Molly Wong

Actionable items:

·       Sign up for The AI school librarians newsletter

·       Look into book: Guided Inquiry Design

·       Try Diffit to translate lessons into Chinese for 3^rd grade ELL student. Test translation tool with native Chinese teachers before using school wide or with parents.

·       Sign up for Right Question Institute

·       Try using Perplexity to synthesize long emails!

 

 

Killer Underwear Invasion: Adapting Media Literacy in the age of misinformation

Featuring: Jen Mason Stott and Sarah Blout Rosenberg

Memorable moments:

·       Elise Gravel book intended to teach about misinformation, disinformation, clickbait, conspiracy theories, etc.

·       Media literacy scope and sequence for fourth graders. Makes them very skeptical about websites!

·       Stott and Rosenberg have received feedback from parents that their kids are super engaged by this series of lessons and are eager to dig into it with adults. Net: this is great for creating lessons that have impact on everyday life.

·       Have student readers “act” the characters. Go through book chapter by chapter – one chapter per lesson/week with discussion and activity breaks.

·       Consider complementing this lesson with the story of Tony Sarg and his Nantucket sea monster hoax of 1937. Darcy Pattison published a book in 2017 that covers this fake news story.

 

·       Example activity: Challenge the students to come up with their own clickbait headline.

·       Commonsense has a resource called “Avoiding Clickbait” that can be used as an activity for the chapter that is dedicated to clickbait.

·       “Chumbox” is the term for those clickbait ads that are numbered lists (“I’m a doctor and these are the 10 vegetables you should never eat again”)

·       Stott and Rosenberg talk students through the birds aren’t real conspiracy theory.

·       Confirmation bias – hard to teach 4^th and 5^th graders, but recommended KQED video Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News?

·       Audience member recommended the Crash Course media literacy resources; Sarah cautioned that it was a bit dated but still good for upper middle and high school. Other audience source suggestions: The Sift and Rumor Guard and Checkology from the News Literacy Project.

·       Another complementary book: Facts vs. Opinions vs. Robots by Michael Rex.

Actionable items:

·       Get the Pear Deck extension! This is such a cool, interactive presentation platform.

·       Incorporate The Killer Underwear Invasion immediately into 4^th/5^th curriculum.

·       Use information in slide deck in upcoming 1^st grade graphic novel unit!

 

Busy school librarian experiencing imposter syndrome created with Microsoft Bing Image Creator

School Librarians and Imposter Syndrome: Why we doubt ourselves and why we shouldn’t!

Featuring: Jen Varney

Memorable Moments:

·       Feelings of incompetence despite all the evidence to the contrary.

·       We tend to chalk up our accomplishments to “good luck”, “being in the right place at the right time” or something else outside of our actual hard work.

·       Pay attention: recognize when it happens.

·       Imposter syndrome is 100% real but is not considered a mental disorder.

·       Imposter syndrome is a reaction to an event.

·       “Don’t try to fight the feeling or discount it. Accept and notice the thoughts as they occur.”

·       It is often the result of critical parents.

·       “Know what your triggers are and prepare for them.”

·       Be cautious of the negative feedback loop. “When I have to call the office for help, it shows that I can’t do it myself.”

·       “Librarianship is a service profession and a feminized profession.”

·       Something that wears on librarians is our constant need to do advocacy work. No one else in education has to advertise what they do with cute posters.

·       There is emotional labor that takes place in the library.

·       ChatGPT top 5 characteristics of successful business managers / medical doctors / lawyers: leadership, decision making, empathy/compassion, adaptability/flexibility, attention to detail, time management, persuasiveness/negotiation skills. This is all true in librarians, too.

·       Audience participated in exercise to list the day to day responsibilities of a school librarian.

Actionable items:

·       Give yourself grace – hold onto the fact that so many librarian heroes were there in the room. Everyone feels like an imposter sometimes.

·       Track triggers – that phone call or drop-in when you don’t immediately have an answer or an idea for a perfect fit book.

·       Look up Michelle Reale book: Meeting the challenge of teaching information literacy

 

Demystifying AI – cans, can’ts, coulds, and shoulds

Featuring: Zak Kolar

Memorable Moments:

·       Librarians recommend using Claude.ai because of the source citations and built in privacy for users.

·       Cans and can’ts: Large language models and Computer vision

·       Large language models: AI operates without context. “It’s like the person at book club who didn’t read the book but listens and makes a statement that paraphrases others.” But there’s no conviction / no understanding / no emotion.

·       Don’t use AI to generate info about a topic you don’t know enough about, because you won’t know what’s wrong in the generated work.

·       Apples/bananas test (sorting a yellow apple into the banana category because it was only trained to recognize red and green apples) demonstrates the limitation of computer vision. AI systems are only as good as the training data.

 ·       Coulds and shoulds: Mistakes, biases, pitfalls, and impact

·       Training data can be skewed. (smargets example)

·       “AI only knows the world that exists in its training data.” (Volvo kangaroo example, Tesla truck fatality example)

·       Name bias in ChapGPT – impacts what people see (ads, posts, video recommendations, etc.). Someone with a typically male name gets “male” product recommendations. Someone with a typically female name gets article links to recipes.

·       “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world. But the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”  Quote by Dr. Melanie Mitchell

Actionable items:

·       Consider taking 5^th graders through Zak’s slide deck to communicate the limitations of AI.

·       Read Zak’s highly recommended books: Building Democracy for All by Robert Malloy and Torrey Trust (Umass professors) and AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor

          

 

 Author panel

Memorable quotes:

       ·       “Dilute the aspirin in the orange juice” – hide your important messages in a great story. (Wrap it in something sweet so they can’t taste the medicine.) – Joel Christian Gill

·       “We access the universal through the hyper specific.” – Roshana Chokshi

·       “Sharing stories is at the root of who we are.” – Joel

·       “Most of what we think of as American history is what I call fan fiction.” – Joel

·       “Hope is better than cynicism and optimism. It requires active participation.” - Deborah Farmer Kris 

·       “It’s a really hard time to be a queer kidlit author.” – Kate Fussner

·       “Pop culture changes things.” – Joel

·       “Hope is a fighter.” – Joel

·       “Noticing goodness in other people inspires awe.” - Deborah

·       “Chase delight.” – Roshana