Takeaways from #NEIT15 - Post 1 - On Incredible Librarians and Tech Integrators

I spent the last three days at the New York State Association of Independent Schools' Education and Information Technology Conference (#NEIT15). I'm so thankful to the conference organizers for the thoughtful work they put into choosing keynotes, balancing them with unconference times, and, of course, sending us to the lovely Mohonk Mountain House!

In my next posts, I'll riff on takeaways from the conference. Here's the first:

Librarians and technology integrators are doing incredible work to inspire students and empower teachers. 

Positioned at a nexus between students, teachers, and administrators, they are the consummate collaborators, constantly envisioning and enacting possibilities for others' work.

One of our keynotes, Shannon McClintock Miller, embodied that role. From her post in the library at the Van Meter Community School, Miller helped to advance teachers' practices, to tap into students' passions, and to lead an effort to develop an innovative K-12 Digital Citizenship, Technology, and Library Science Curriculum for her whole district. All the while, by sharing out her practices, she has inspired countless others to leverage their positions similarly nationwide. Miller and so many conference attendees I met are models of connective, collaborative action, achieving more--seemingly, all at once--than I might ever think possible had I not seen it.

All this sounds great, right? But it does raise the following questions for me:

Whence comes this extraordinary energy, this incredible capacity for action, not just from Miller but from an entire corps of librarians and technology integrators? How can we unleash it where we haven't yet, and feed it where we have?

Also, are circumstances somehow mandating these superhuman performances? Are we supporting these professionals enough? Are we hiring enough of them? Where should we draw the lines between specialists' responsibilities and core teachers'? Should we be worried about burnout? 

Next up: On Defining Digital Literacy (and the need for vision in EdTech)