Weekend Training Course

School Libraries: Leading Learning
Friday 13th - Sunday 15th June 2008
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

Report | Photos || Presentations | Programme | Sponsors

Report

It was a welcome return to Scotland for this year's SLA Weekend Course, and a distinctive Scottish flavour to the whole experience, with the wonderful Glasgow City Chambers for our Friday drinks reception courtesy of the Lord Provost of Glasgow, the Saturday night piper leading us to dinner, not forgetting the céilidh, and of course some excellent Scottish speakers and workshop leaders. The whole programme was very full (maybe too full and we are looking at this), very stimulating and very enjoyable, according to delegates in their written evaluations and verbal accolades.

Delegates, both returning old hands and complete newbies, commented on the special buzz at the weekend and the warmth of the welcome they received in Glasgow. They appreciated the quality of the speakers and the enjoyable social programme arranged for the evenings.

The conference was opened by Martyn Wade, National Librarian of Scotland, and delegates had an opportunity to visit either the National Library in Edinburgh or the Mitchell Library in Glasgow on Friday morning.

I can see that a lot of work goes into organizing the weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.

Loved Glasgow as the venue.

I have really enjoyed the weekend and gained a lot from it. Thank you for all your hard work.

An excellent weekend. Host University very welcoming. Content interesting, social events great fun.

Thank you for an extremely thought provoking and inspiring weekend. So many ideas - so little time to act upon them all!

Author talks really good. Civic reception - superb in beautiful surroundings. Now I need a week off work to make sense of my notes and look up all the references.

Excellent food and service (and venue) for Saturday dinner. The Ceilidh was wonderful.

There was the usual great group of inspirational keynote speakers and an excellent range of practical optional sessions where delegates picked up lots of ideas to take home and try out.

Keynotes:

Rhona Arthur, Assistant Director CILIPS/SLIC
Dr John Crawford, Director, Scottish Information Literacy Project
Mike Brearley, Associate, Independent Thinking Ltd
Jamie Jauncey, author
Christine Irving, Project Officer, Scottish Information Literacy Project
Nicola Morgan, author
Dr Jonathan Sharples, Deputy Director, Institute for the Future of the Mind
Elspeth S Scott, ICT and e-learning Staff Tutor, Education Service, Dundee

On Sunday morning we had an enjoyable discussion between authors Anne Cassidy and Celia Rees, chaired by author Keith Grey, which was lively and appreciated.

I have never attended any conference, where every speaker made such a valuable, well delivered, interesting and comprehensive presentation. 15/10 for your speakers!

The brain sessions on Friday were particularly interesting.

Excellent - came away with so many ideas! - thanks for a really inspiring course.

Very stimulating talk to open the course - just what is needed after an early start and a busy morning travelling!... A good range of optional sessions - found it difficult to decide which to attend... this is what we need - ideas that we can put into immediate use back in our schools.

Some fascinating sessions e.g. brain stuff. Will want to find out more!

Learning brain theme on Friday was wonderful - all the talks complemented each other. Thank you!

We had an excellent and enjoyable range of authors at the conference, both as keynote speakers and enlivening our coffee breaks and Saturday drinks reception:

We are particularly grateful to Mike Brearley and Julie Bertagna who stood in at 24 hours notice for Ian Gilbert and Catherine MacPhail who were both unable to attend due to personal circumstances.

The inimitable Norfolk Children's Book Centre ran our bookshop in their usual efficient way, and provided all the books anyone could have wanted, especially titles from our featured authors, and a large and sometimes quite crowded resources exhibition was again much appreciated by delegates. Thanks to all the people who made these two features of our weekends a success.

The exhibition was most useful

Many thanks to those exhibitors for proof copies (of books) posters, support...

As always we also owe a huge debt of gratitude to the sponsors, without whom we would not be able to put on such a great weekend course (full details on separate sponsors page).