My wife was out of town for the weekend, and a good friend of mine just so happened to be going to DC for the annual American Library Association conference. He had an extra bed in his paid-for by work hotel room and invited me to join him. One bus trip later, and I’m in DC.

Something many people don’t know about me: I was a teenage librarian. In high school I spent a year working after school in my high school’s library, and then two years working in my town’s public library in their children’s department. It was a formative experience that definitely helped set me on my future career path as an educator. Given that, I spent the $25 for the exhibits floor pass.

In a lucky coincidence, I saw that Melissa Techman was going to be in DC on Saturday for the conference. A year ago at NECC, I went down for a day and had lunch with a bunch of special educators and a few other “friends of sped,” Melissa being one of said friends. In some nice symmetry, this year I got to go out to lunch as a friend of libraries with Melissa, Diane Cordell (a long-time Twitter friend that I finally got to meet in person), Gretchen Caserotti, Cathy Jo Nelson, and Kathy Ishizuka. We had plenty of good food and better conversation, as was the case last year.

Kathy is the Technology Editor for the School Library Journal, and later wrote me an e-mail asking for my impressions of the conference. Here’s what I wrote in reply:

It’s funny, this is the second year in a row that I’ve been to the Washington Convention Center and only been able to see the exhibits floor for a conference. The floor is pretty much like the floor of any other large convention: it’s heavy on the free stuff and phony marketing interactions. On the plus side for ALA, this convention didn’t seem to have any strange cult-like booths like the SMART booth at NECC last year.

As a special educator,I was really disappointed on the floor by the assistive technology pavilion, which didn’t seem to really have much in the way of assistive technology at all that I could see. I’d imagine that people with reading difficulties are one of those underserved populations that could stand to have more opportunities for access, and there wasn’t much of that there.

I noticed a definite trend toward making friendlier spaces for the visiting public. Lots of furniture and shelves that look cozy and inviting. I noticed in one booth they were featuring gaming stations to try and get the teenage demographic back into libraries. In the same tone, it was nice to see a good-sized presence of companies that produce comic books and graphic novels there.

On a side note: I’m somewhat surprised by the number of companies that specialize in moving libraries.

Just from the bits and pieces I picked up on from talking to some people and listening in on some others, it’s interesting to see many of the same shared anxieties that teachers and librarians share right now. Increasing technology and decreasing tax revenues are big stressors on both groups, and I very much get the feeling that we’re in the midst of a major reordering of the way the world works for all of us. I think the concern for both groups at the moment is to get out in front of the changes to help guide them in a positive fashion.

We watched this* in my class today.

Homework for my students tonight: Remind your parents to vote.

*This, being a video about voting, is only worthwhile until Brainpop changes their current free video. So this might not make sense when it’s telling you about the Pilgrims or something.

With no school policy to back him up, he spent less time on the subject than he would have liked. And he bit back his irritation at Teresa Yancey, a biology teacher down the hall who taught a unit she called “Evolution or NOT.”

Animals do adapt to their environments, Ms. Yancey tells her students, but evolution alone can hardly account for the appearance of wholly different life forms. She leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. But when pressed, she tells them, “I think God did it.”

This means, of course, that she decided to spend time axe-grinding with her students instead of teaching them actual biology.

Thanks to @dajbelshaw for the tipoff. While you’re at it, make sure to check out his new social networking site for edte.ch people.

I think that the video really gives good advice about how to deal with almost any negative situation, and really gives excellent tips for how we can talk to our students.  Never call the student “bad” for instance, but explain to them how their behavior was wrong and what they could do to improve it.  Take a gander, it’s worth 3 minutes of your time.