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I’ve been working with Keith Bollman and his fifth grade class on a research project. The end result is a tour of the solar system, completely planned, designed, researched, and created by the… Read More →

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I wish Google Docs had an embed button, but nope...they give you a link to share :)  So here's the presentation from TCEA.  Enjoy!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-wHb5Nsjhy0MGJIUDVBSmlRWWs/edit?usp=sharing

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Tomorrow night I’ve been invited to talk with parents and host a mini-writing workshop for families. You must know, about a week ago, our youngest, Sam (a first grader), gave two slips of… Read More →

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I had a great time at OCL (Berkeley branch) last night. Despite the heavy downpour, which started a half hour before my presentation began, we had a good-sized crowd. I received a lovely email from someone in the audience this morning. The heading was 'Your Awesome Talk at the Library', so I knew I had at least one satisfied customer.

In the general book signing/chinwag afterwards, someone told me they'd tried to book themselves a place on the 150-minute workshops I'm teaching at the Georgian Court University next month, but there were no spaces available. 

There are still a few slots left on Toni DePalma and Teresa Link's workshops. If you'd like to come along, we'd love to see you here.

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Last week Annie Campbell published this op-ed, “Guarding Fragility,” in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It is powerful and worth the read. I hope you check it out. Annie has been helping me with my… Read More →

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I had a great time at the New Jersey Library Association conference on Tuesday and Wednesday. I met lots of nice people, some of whom I knew via email or telephone only, so it was good to put faces to names. I've got plenty of new contacts for NJAN, and other writerly events. I also sold some books, so all in all, a successful trip. 

If you ever find yourself in Atlantic City, NJ, I highly recommend the Revel Resort hotel. The staff were terrific and I loved my room, especially the shower. The towels were so light and fluffy, I could hardly close the lid on my suitcase. I'm not too good with heights, so I did find it unnerving to have a wall-length window view of the ocean from my room on the 25th floor, but it was nothing curtains couldn't fix.

I left a little early so I could get home in good time to make it to my 10 Things Every Writer Should Know talk at Monmouth County Library (HQ) in my adopted home town of Manalapan last night. People seemed to enjoy it. I had another 'Savor the moment' moment afterwards when two people in the audience brought their copies of Fur-Face up to the table. I thought at first they'd come for a refund, but it turns out they wanted me to sign them.

Afterwards, I had a good chinwag with some of my friends from the Monmouth Creative Writing Group for about an hour-and-a-half, which is always fun.


Now it's back to the grindstone. I've got my inbox down to less than a hundred emails now. If I owe you a reply (or a blog comment) I expect to have pretty much caught up by around midday. Then it's lunch, followed by my afternoon writing session.

How about you?

How's your week going?


   

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Aaron has a good post about giving good presentations. As always, stick around for the comments. I offered my advice. Even in the short thread, it’s interesting that people have such different ideas about what makes a good presentation. Should it be something that can be repackaged and replayed without the presenter at a later date? Should there be handouts? What’s the balance between charisma and raw data?

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Today George and I presented "Keeping Your Head While Serving the Community" at the Association for Small and Rural Libraries Conference in Gatlinburg, TN. Play our slides if you'd like, though they may lose some context without the audio.

This conference has been a big boost for my spirits. I've been serving on the ARSL board since February as an ex-officio member from WebJunction, and even that didn't prepare me for this wonderful conference. I learned that Kansas librarians arrived by bus, having driven the 16 hours to Gatlinburg from their home state (I'm sure some of them traveled longer). Further, I have to say, Kansas really represented the social networking scene by being the biggest contributors to the #ARSL2009 hash tag! I forgot to add the tag most of the time I was there, so, that was sort of lame of me, but Go Kansas!

It was also really good for me to have the opportunity to present with George; an honor. I think it's fair to say that I was a little bit slammed with work-related things before this conference and so I didn't have the time to collaborate as much as I would have liked before the presentation. But I thought our content went together very well and I really enjoyed doing the presentation overall. If you by chance saw us, please tell me what you thought of our talk (a dose of my own "evaluation" medicine, so to speak ... so that I too can iterate!).

My favorite presentation of the day introduced me to Give Em the Pickle a customer service slogan from Mr. Farrell (of Farrell's restaurants -- it may look totally cheesy, but this guy is hilarous and has great advice for serving our patrons well). My favorite interactive session of the day was from the State Library of North Carolina on "getting your community back to work". I have more to say about that, but it will have to wait for another day...

Finally, I had amazing conversations with colleagues all weekend either working in small and rural libraries, or working in state libraries to support small and rural libraries. It has been too long since I've been out and about. Cindi Hickey, thank you for giving me the encouragement I needed about the presentation! I tell ya, it really helps me to remember why we do the things we do back at the office.

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I visit a lot of schools, and interest in the old-style author visit (with an author speaking to an auditorium full of children) seems to be flagging. These visits typically consist of an author or authors speaking about overcoming obstacles such as rejection to reach their dreams. The authors intend to motivate students and might spice up their speech by singing, dancing, playing a musical instrument, or using whatever other talents they possess.

With the No Child Left Behind Act and other legislation, I’m finding teachers would rather have author visits that directly apply to or complement instruction in the classroom. Schools are under pressure to attain high test scores, and teachers view all instruction time as precious.  If an author can teach children to write better, that’s more valuable than discussing the road to authordom.

This is fortuitous for me. I’ve never enjoyed being “on stage,” speaking to large groups primarily as an entertainer. I enjoy a smaller audience I can interact with. The two presentations I conduct most in classrooms might be more accurately called “workshops.” In my “You Be the Artist!” presentation, I speak to younger children (usually kindergartners through second graders) about the process of publication and they take part in illustrating a page for a book. In my “Great Aunt Mabel’s Sweater” presentation, I speak to older children (usually middle schoolers) about descriptive writing and they perform two writing exercises and volunteer to read their work in “share time.”

I led both of these workshops at a public school last week, and a teacher said to me, “This is what we need. The kids were more interested than they usually are in author visits, and they learned more.”

I’m going to pass this along to my author friends. Some despair about visiting schools because they “have no talent but writing.” But writing talent is precisely what many teachers and schools hope authors can spark in students. Increasingly, schools are looking at authors more as mentors for students than as entertainers.

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Watch this OUTSTANDING presentation from Tulika Books about multilingual children's book publishing!

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Children’s and YA Book Blogs: Enhancing Library Services.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
8 a.m – 10 a.m.

I presented with Travis from 100 Scope Notes and Pam from MotherReader. Despite competing popular programming, such as the YALSA “speed dating with authors” coffee klatch, as well as an 8:00 a.m. start date, 130 people attended this panel on using book blogs to assist in library services such as collection development, readers advisory, and programming.

The PowerPoint, should you want to look at it, is available at SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/eaburns/ala-presentation

Travis has a terrific video at his website; and Pam also reports on ALA at her blog. The Photo is from Mitali Perkins. (Thanks Mitali who doesn't know I borrowed it...well, she knows now.)

Blogs mentioned in the PowerPoint, in order they were initially mentioned. All were accessed and live as of June 2010; I added a couple of updated URLs were appropriate.

Elizabeth Burns, A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, http://yzocaet.blogspot.com/

Pam Coughlan, MotherReader, http://www.motherreader.com/

Travis Jonker, 100 Scope Notes, http://100scopenotes.com/

Melissa Wiley, Here in the Bonny Glen, http://melissawiley.typepad.com/bonnyglen currently blogs at http://melissawiley.com/blog

Cybils, http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils and http://www.cybils.com/

Robin Brande, http://www.robinbrande.com/

Annual Kidlitosphere Conference, www.kidlitosphere.org/kidlitcon and information about the October 2010 Conference is at http://kidlitcon2010.blogspot.com/

Kidlitosphere Central, http://www.kidlitosphere.org/

A Fuse # 8 Production at School Library Journal, http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production

Kids Lit, http://kidslit.menashalibrary.org/

American Indians in Children’s Literature, http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
Charlotte’s Library, http://charlotteslibrary.blogspot.com/

From the Mixed Up Files . . . of Middle Grade Authors, http://www.fromthemixedupfiles.com/

Little Willow, http://slayground.livejournal.com/

Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, http://childrens-literacy.com/

Color Online, http://coloronline.blogspot.com/

C

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SO, this summer I had the opportunity of providing some professional development for librarians and teachers around this grand old state, and had a great time doing it! Not only did they learn some things from me, but I also learned from them as well!! And then there were those moments I just stumbled into....and here's one that I had to share!!
If you use Prezi, did you know that you can embed youtube book trailers into the presentation? This is the place where publishers are putting their trailers, and they are very professionally done...
Well, if you embed them into Prezi and then use it offline, the video is still maintained even if you're not online - LOVE IT!!
And there are some great prezis to search through too! Someone in a workshop found this Prezi, and I LOVED the layout...had to share it as well!! Thanks Cassandra, for making this a public prezi!!

http://prezi.com/imt-qzhr_fph/great-books/

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In the past month, I've helped both of my kids make PowerPoint presentations for school.  I begged them to do Prezis, but they were happy to do PowerPoints.  Which is fine.  But if every kid in each of their classes did PowerPoints, that means that the poor teacher had to sit through Lord knows how many of the things over the week of presentations.  Now, I don't have much sympathy for the teachers because they assigned the things and no one has ever taught the kids how to create a great PowerPoint presentation.  (Actually, my son's was entertaining.  He embedded a video from YouTube and ended the whole thing with a Blabberized Thomas Jefferson.  But, both of those sites are blocked at his school, so neither worked on the day of the presentation. But that's neither here nor there...) My point is this: PowerPoint is dangerous.  It can kill you.  It can bore you to death.  Below is a great Slideshare that addresses this very topic.

The slideshow was created by Alexei Kapterev.  Thanks to EdGalaxy for posting this.  Also check out Jesse Desjardins's  You Suck At PowerPoint slideshow from the same post.

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David Lee King and I rarely cross paths, but it’s always great to get to see him speak. Over the past month he’s been creating a really good set of posts called 10 Tips to Do Presentations Like Me. Each post has a headline and an explanation of why that thing is a good way to do presentations. Of course everyone has their own way of doing things, but it’s nice to see someone who has an effective and engaging presentation style really taking the time to outline just what they’re doing that’s working. It’s not magic, it’s hard work and some attention to detail.

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Thanks to everyone for coming to the presentation at SLSA day in Ft. worth!  I learned a lot and enjoyed sharing as well : )  Here are the two link for the presentations I showed:

http://prezi.com/tv8s3pv207ky/fall-2010-ya-booktalk/  (Fall 2010)

http://prezi.com/fnd9om_dpp4h/spring-2011-booktalk/ (Spring 2011)

Enjoy!!

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Here's the link to the prezi.  Just an FYI:  I updated the livebinders book trailer resources to include online photo editors : )

http://prezi.com/m68smuvk3bi9/book-trailers-making-students-want-to-read-created-by-naomi-bates-northwest-high-school/

http://prezi.com/4knxruygzvuv/book-trailer-survey/

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My friend June Yazel and I are putting together a workshop called: Tackling Technology in a Writer’s World. We are planning two different versions, one for elementary teachers and another for content area secondary teachers. Although similar, the secondary version will focus more on research and informational writing while the elementary version will focus more [...]

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Tomorrow evening, I'll be giving my presentation, 10 Things Every Writer Should Know, at Long Hill Library, NJ. Kick-off's at 7:30pm. If you'd like to come along, I'd love to see you there.

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I’ve posted two more slide presentations from the workshop today over on our Presentations Page.  Below are links: Establishing a Community Getting Started with Focus Lessons I’m not sure how useful these will be, because they are brief overviews and then the participants roll up their sleeves and get to work.  I allow the same philoshopy which guides [...]

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