Kickoff Challenge from Carol Koechlin

Our kickoff challenge from Carol Koechlin is to consider answers to the following questions and share in-person tomorrow or on Twitter using #TMCanada2020

What is your 2020 vision for your national school library group?  

What would you like to see happen further with Leading Learning, now five years old?  

What would really help you, your schools, and your districts?

What would you like to see from the Canadian School Libraries Journal?

Congratulations to CSL 2020 Awards Recipients

Canadian School Libraries honours Alison Bodner, Alanna King, and Sarah Wethered as recipients of the Angela Thacker Memorial Award 2020.

"I encourage everyone to take the initiative to get involved in school and library organizations and not shy away from offering others mentorship and professional development" - Alison Bodner

"It's not in my nature to be still...I will continue to pursue advocacy for school libraries. Each day, I believe that the world can be a better place and that we need to start that process by making sure that each person has a shot at making a difference for themselves" - Alanna King

"I'm honoured to work with such an amazing group of dedicated educators...I am deeply honoured to have received this award and am truly humbled by it" - Sarah Wethered


Read more about the recipients in CSL's Angela Thacker Memorial Award 2020 Announcement 


Canadian School Libraries honours Pembina Trails School Division as the first recipient of the first Leading Learning Implementation Award. 

"The transformation to Library Learning Commons would not have been possible without the guidance provided by Leading Learning...well-supported school libraries have a tremendous impact on student learning and well-being"  - Jo-Anne Gibson, on behalf of Pembina Trails School Division

Read more in CSL's Leading Learning Implementation Award 2020 Announcement 

TMC6 Keynote Speaker: Eric Walters

TMC6 has officially kicked off with keynote speaker, Eric Walters!  

During his time on the road between events, Eric made use of time in his car by calling the many smart people he knows who are passionate about writing, education, and literacy and brought them together at the Canadian Reading Summit.

Bringing together people from different areas relevant to reading Canadian completed the picture and resulted in I Read Canadian Day.

This day recognizes that Canada "is a powerfully diverse country" and asks people to read a book of their choice on February 19th 2020 at schools, libraries, and daycares across Canada.  Find out more at I Read Canadian Day.

The Eric Walters Summer Lending Program started with a Tweet, followed by an article.  Schools quickly got on board while Eric signed posters and bookmarks and sent them to participants.  Over 165 schools were involved.  The results of this program are examined in the research paper, The Eric Walters School Library Summer Reading Challenge: Findings from the Research by Anita Brooks Kirkland and Carol Koechlin. 

Eric spoke about his beginnings writing as a teacher for his class, approximately 114 books ago, as well as his newest book, Fourth Dimension.  The book features his grade 5 teacher, Christena Gay, who told him he could be a writer when he grew up and demonstrates the profound impact teachers have on their students.

Learn more at Eric's website

Building a Nation of Readers

Canadian School Libraries is participating in two important projects to promote Canadian books and build a nation of readers.  

Our TMC6 keynote speaker Eric Walters has been a driving force behind this very first I Read Canadian Day. CSL would like every school in Canada to participate, and encourage you to promote this event in your school districts and libraries. Visit the I Read Canadian Day website to sign up. It’s free! The website has all sorts of resources for you, including a toolkit created by a CSL committee.

The Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) is taking Canadian children’s books to where youth already are: YouTube.

Plans are underway for a YouTube channel to showcase videos and links to resources about Canadian books for children and youth. The channel, called Bibliovideo, will be promoted as a destination for young readers, librarians, teachers, parents, authors, illustrators, researchers and others who want to locate and learn more about great Canadian books for young people.

The CCBC is committed to ensuring that there is better digital access and promotion of these exceptional Canadian books to raise awareness and promote literacy.

With funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, Bibliovideo is the first step in a long-range digital strategy being developed by a consortium of organizations led by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre that includes the Association of Canadian Publishers/49thKids, Canadian School Libraries, CANSCAIP, Communication-Jeunesse and IBBY Canada.

Read more about Bibliovideo and view the promotional video on the CCBC website.

View the Bibliovideo promotion on Vimeo. 

The CCBC would like your perspective as educators and librarians about what you would like to see on Bibliovideo.

Please take a few minutes to respond to this short survey from the CCBC. 

All Set for TMC6 2020!

TMC6 is less than a week away! 

TMC is a participatory experience. Here are some ways that everyone can participate in TMC6. 

TMC6 papers are posted on this blog for everyone to read and discuss. 

• If you are coming to TMC, we strongly encourage you to read as many papers as you can before coming to the symposium.

• If you are not coming to the symposium, we invite you to be a virtual participant. Start by reading the papers and joining the discussion on this blog. 

The TMC6 program has been posted on the website. 

• See what's happening at the symposium on the TMC6 Schedule page

• All symposium interactive activities will be linked from the schedule page

Follow this blog.

• Our live blogger Jordan Graham will be reporting on events and discussions during the symposium, and will be sharing photos. 

• All updates will be posted to this blog.

Share the TMC6 experience. 

• Use the hashtag #TMCanada2020 to share papers, impressions and insights on social media.

• Consider using the OLA Super Conference hashtag #OLASC, too.

TMC6 Papers Table of Contents

Thanks for being a part of TMC6!

TMC6 Papers are Now Available

Many TMC6 papers have now been added to this TMCanada blog, ready for you to read and discuss. More papers will be added regularly as they are received. 

A Participatory Experience

TMC is a biennial research symposium and think tank. TMC invites researchers, school library practitioners, educational leaders and policy-makers to move forward together and collaboratively explore ideas, inspire each other and build collective knowledge of the learning commons approach as part of sustainable school improvement.

TMC is a participatory experience. Practitioners and researchers have submitted papers for consideration during the symposium. We are using this TMCanada blog to host the papers and associated discussions.

Be Part of the Discussion

As TMC participants, we strongly encourage you to read as many papers as you can before coming to the symposium, and to start participating in the online discussion associated with each paper on this blog. We also invite those of you who cannot attend the symposium in person to read the papers and participate in the discussion.

The papers have been posted on this website according to the four sub-themes of this symposium, however the editors acknowledge that many papers actually connect across more than one theme. Each paper has its own page complete with information about the author and a brief summary of the work. You will see a link inviting you to Read the Paper on each page. As you read you can add comments for the author in the comments section at the bottom of the page. The authors will appreciate your thoughts, questions and additional ideas and links and we encourage our authors to respond to comments. Remember, if you are not able to attend in person we would still appreciate your comments.

Please be sure to identify yourself as instructed when you post a comment. Anonymous comments may be removed by the moderator. 

Please Share! 

We want to share the great work of this symposium as far and wide as possible. Please use the hashtag #TMCanada2020 to share papers, impressions and personal insights. TMC6 is part of the Ontario Library Association Super Conference, so you may want to share some comments with the conference hashtag #OLASC

TMC6 Papers Table of Contents