Two colleagues (Melissa Guerrette, Susan Dee) and I were asked to be Twitter Ambassadors for this past weekend’s New England Reading Association annual conference. The NERA conference was held in Portland, Maine so it was right on our home turf! Now I had never heard of a Twitter Ambassador, but I was intrigued.  I found out that basically it was our task to support NERA members in becoming more active on social media and to generate some buzz about the conference.

So we:

• Had a Twitter Central kiosk with information on getting started and who to follow
• Created a photo frame to memorialize attendees conference presence on Twitter
• Had a streaming display of conference tweets on Visible Tweets
• Tweeted out from every session we attended
• Tweeted photos of attendees, vendors, and presenters
• (At one point we were trending and therefore had the inevitable attack of raunch that we had to monitor and block!)

I thought rather than discuss all the amazing sessions and experiences here, I’d share my Storify of tweets here. Storify is a great way to memorialize stories or timelines of events that you could share with others. If you haven’t tried it, check it out HERE.

My #NERA2016 Storify

I also LOVE collecting and sharing photos via Google photos, so I’ll share some of those here as well!

Google Photos #NERA2016

How can you find ways to capture, memorialize, or reflect on your professional experiences?  There are a lot of tools that can help make that task easier. You might want to take some time during your upcoming summer break to check some out!

What’s On My Book Radar?

YES!!!

This book!  I am just getting into it, but I already have to recommend it.  The whole premise of Jan Burkins’ and Kim Yaris’ book aligns with one of my most repeated coaching comments,

“Whoever does the work, does the learning!”

Jan and Kim look at some of the more traditional practices that were attempts to scaffold children, but that may inadvertently rob students of opportunities to become more self-directed learners. They suggest adjustments to instruction that hold students accountable for their own learning.

You can follow the conversation about this book on Twitter at #whosdoingthe work