Teachers, principals, and students all need to understand not only the basics of US copyright law as they relate to the creation and publication of media products but also the opportunities presented for LEGAL remixing and reuse of media materials licensed through Creative Commons. This session presents practical suggestions for schools, educators, and students to avoid intellectual property liability problems and empower learners to LEGALLY create as well as share a wide variety of media/knowledge products on the global stage.

Bonnie Barnes, Educational Technology Consultant from Region XI, will show you some of the Best Social Studies Resources and Lessons for Collaborative Projects using the K-12 Statewide Databases and Databases available through TETPC.

Following David Loertscher's premise that kids should create their own iGoogle web pages, this presentation will synthesize his ideas and describe how kids can develop Web 2.0 skills in a controlled environment.

Officially launched at the 2008 AASL Conference, "Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" replace “Information Power” as guidelines for helping students and school library media specialists become 21st-century learners. This session will provide an brief overview of the new standards and introduce you to the wiki that library media specialists are using to contribute ideas for implementing the standards in their programs.

The Tejas Star Book Award was created by the Region 1 Library Advisory Committee to promote reading in general and for readers to discover the cognitive and economic benefits of bilingualism and multilingualism. All the children of Texas have the opportunity to select their favorite book from the Tejas Star list during the 2008-2000 academic year. Participation for all children is encouraged, not just English language learners.

Why Authors Should Fall to Their Knees and Worship Librarians Want to be sure students are excited about reading? Introduce them to the people who create books! There is no other literary event guaranteed to get kids more involved with books than connecting them personally with authors or illustrators during an Author Visit. Presented from an author’s viewpoint, this presentation will address the role librarians play in connecting kids to authors and how to insure a successful visit.

A short introduction to the Parent and Tot program being done in twenty-one Dallas elementary schools. Participants are parents and their preschool children. The goals of the program are to develop the
six pre-reading skills and to nurture trust and rapport with our Spanish speaking parents.

Are your teachers and students reluctant to use the online databases your school subscribes to? The ideas presented in this session will help convince teachers and students alike to use databases for their scholarly research rather than evaluating each website a search engine produces.

"Are your images bloating up your website? Size does matter." Best practices will be shared for managing images on the library website. Streamline your pages and still get your message across.

What's new on the horizon for the K-12 Databases funded by TEA?