Our annual Teacher Librarian Day, which was originally scheduled for February 4th, was postponed due to a monster snowstorm courtesy of Mother Nature. Fourteen inches of snow fell on the Denver Metro area the night before the conference, which led to Auraria Campus closing the following morning. Not a team to abandon all hope, we at TPS Metro State quickly decided to reschedule our flagship event.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/476\/2021\/05\/Morning-of-TLD-300x225-1.jpeg\")
We feared the worst: TCAP testing resulting in a small crowd, and TLD taking place on a Thursday, but after a quick poll of registrants showed interest, we proceeded to reschedule the conference for Thursday, March 8. We now had an extra month to put all the pieces back together for the conference!<\/p>\n
Despite all of our concerns about educators being able to attend, \u00a0registrations for the reschedule came flooding in the day we sent out the invitation. With less than an month to register\u00a0we had an amazing 116 registrations! We were simply blown away by the interest the reschedule garnered. We knew we had loyal attendees, but this was amazing to see, and made all of our extra hard work worth it.<\/p>\n
Based on last year’s positive feedback we once again adopted the TED<\/a>-style conference format. This year, we\u00a0also did things a bit differently based on requests for\u00a0longer periods for reflection in-between sessions, a more diverse profile of speakers, and the novel approach of showcasing specific features of the Library of Congress website distilled to a brief 60 seconds.<\/p>\n The conference turned out to be our most successful one yet. \u00a0Here’s a few quotes from the participants:<\/p>\n “This conference has helped me awaken to the idea that as an educator we have to both a teacher and a learner.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “It encourages you to pay more attention then if you were at conference where you bring your own computer where you would be off task and multitasking. So I really love the format, and that it’s quick,\u00a0succinct, and engages you at\u00a0the\u00a0same time.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/476\/2021\/05\/IMG_0148-225x300-1.jpeg\")
This year’s theme was “Primary Passion.” We asked our speakers to give talks revolving around things they are passionate about, with an emphasis on how those passions relate to primary sources and education. We had a amazingly diverse set of presentations:<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/476\/2021\/05\/IMG_0168-225x300-1.jpeg\")
Participants also got in on the act as they were asked to use a Twitter backchannel to comment\u00a0and share what they were experiencing at TLD 2012. We were \u00a0excited to see the participants’\u00a0instant feedback, and \u00a0that some were even shooting video on their phones and\u00a0sharing it with their social networks. Keith Patterson with TPS Metro State worked\u00a0backstage getting the presenters ready to go on. He said \u201cThe presenters were really excited\u00a0about the instant feedback Twitter was giving them. I showed them the Twitter feed as they were coming off-stage,\u00a0and they were surprised how quickly it validated that their presentations\u00a0were engaging the participants, and the connections that were being made.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/tpswesternregion\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/476\/2021\/05\/IMG_0118-300x225-1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n