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This week a few of us UNCG-ers went to Metrolina’s 5th Annual Information Literacy Conference at Johnson and Wales University. Metrolina is the professional library association for the Charlotte area. It is always a great conference, and a great venue for meeting old friends and making new ones.

Before delving into my session notes, I want to give a huge shout out to Metrolina. Instead of giving conference attendees a lanyard or some other throw away, they gave $1000 to the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. Great idea! More conferences should follow that example. Believe me, I have plenty of lanyards now.

The keynote session was a talk by UNCG’s own Dr. Clara Chu on information literacy in a multicultural context. She argued for using information literacy skills to support our critical engagement with the world especially in regards to multiculturalism. Her talk was great because it found the commonalities between information literacy and critical pedagogy. I read bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress many years ago with the intention of being a polisigh professor. Although I am not constantly in a classroom, in a way my current profession fits better with hooks’ approach to education. My purpose isn’t to impart knowledge, but to provide the means for developing knowledge. Dr. Chu’s talk made me want to reread critical pedagogy and rethink my approaches to teaching!

Appropriately enough, after Dr. Chu’s talk, Amy Harris, Jenny Dale, and I did a mini-workshop/ presentation on adding interactivity to the classroom. It was appropriate because interactivity is not just about group work, but also about distributing power across the classroom by drawing on the preexisting knowledge of students. The attendees seemed to enjoy it even though we made them get up and walk around! Here is our Prezi (designed by the masterful Jenny Dale!).

After lunch I session hopped a bit (sheepish grin). Jeri Langford and Valerie Freeman from Johnson & Wales University were preaching it by telling attendees to engage with faculty on their own turf. Basically, we need to get our butts out of the library. They were a good presentation duo because one was a librarian and the other was a professor.

Jason Setzer and Amy Baker of Davidson County Community College Library presented on their Blackboard-integrated info lit game. My favorite part was the Squeaky Clean Smack Talk Forum–a discussion forum in which players can smack talk each other (cleanly).

Finally, I finally learned how to create those snazzy mobile library websites in a session with Michael Winecoff from UNC Charlotte and Beth Martin from Johnson C. Smith University. You should check out their great website on creating mobile sites.

I missed many more great sessions including Rosalind Tedford and Molly Keener of Wake Forest University talking about the use of documentary film in info lit classes (COOL!). The presentation powerpoints should be available soon from the Metrolina website. If you haven’t been to the Metrolina IL Conference, it is definitely worth a visit next year. It is an inexpensive but information rich venue for all NC and SC instruction librarians. Way to go Metrolina!