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General Sessions
Opening General Session
danah boyd
Thursday, November 5, 3:30 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
Ballroom
You’ll want to be on hand as we begin the conference with opening speaker dana boyd. An expert on online social network sites, the interdisciplinary research related to technology, communication, identity, and social behavior, boyd has been dubbed the “high priestess” of networked social media and is an internationally recognized authority on the ways people use these new media—who inhabits the world of online social network sites, what they do there, and why. This guest speaker is an advisor to a wide range of companies, including LiveJournal, Technorati, Blyk, and Youth Media Exchange.
Special Session
Turbocharge Your Day with James Patterson!—Read Kiddo Read!
Parents and Librarians Band Together to Make Kids Lifelong Readers
Friday, November 6, 8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m.
Ballroom
Join us for a special general session with James Patterson, the number-one selling author in America for the past three years and author of the critically acclaimed Maximum Ride series, an American Library Association 2005 Teens Top Ten pick. This author is passionate about getting kids to love reading. His new website ReadKiddoRead.com is designed to help parents, teachers, and librarians find books that will appeal to kids at all reading levels and interest levels. Reviews are targeted toward identifying books with high kid appeal, and Patterson's interviews with leading authors, such as Rick Riordan, bring authors closer to parents and kids. Join James Patterson as he discusses the inspiration behind the site and the critical importance of getting our youth to love reading and learning.
Closing General Session
Marco Torres
Saturday, November 7, 2:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Ballroom
The AASL 14th National Conference will end with speaker Marco Torres, an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, and author of a wide variety of digital content. Torres is also a high school social studies teacher in San Fernando and was named the California Teacher of Year in 2007. He serves on the board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He is a passionate teacher focused on helping students become engaged in learning and acquire the skills they need to thrive in our 21st-century digital culture. Marco Torres believes in helping students learn to market themselves well because test scores cannot and do not sum up the capabilities and potentials of human beings. Marco is a fellow-devotee of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, and sees digital media as the tools of liberation for people who have lived in comparatively disadvantaged situations. Marco sees the Internet as the stage on which digital media content is and will continue to be published for a global audience hungry to hear the voices of our neighborhoods.
