Presenters

(if there’s no hyperlink, look below the table for info)

Di Laycock is a teacher librarian at Barker College in Sydney. She is passionate about promoting boys’ reading and has a particular interest in the use of graphic novels to engage readers for both pleasure and in the classroom. Arising from this interest, Di has published and presented on the topic of graphic novels at international, national and regional levels. Recently she commenced her professional doctorate through the University of Sydney to further explore the topic of ‘comics in the classroom’.

 

Di also believes strongly in the need for teachers to engage in evidence-based practice; to turn intuitive practice into informed and intentional practice. To this end she is currently the Action Research Co-ordinator for the International Boys’ Schools Coalition and co-coordinator of CARTL, the ASLA (NSW) research community for teacher librarians.

 

In 2008 Di was the co-recipient of the ASLA (NSW) Teacher Librarian of the Year award.

In her role as Manager, Virtual Reference Services, Reader Services Branch, National Library of Australia, Aileen Weir oversees the National Library's web-based "Ask a Librarian" service and manages the "AskNow" chat reference service that is offered collaboratively by the State/Territory Libraries, the National Library of New Zealand, and the National Library of Australia. Aileen also played a key role in enabling Australians to join the National Library through offsite user registration and remote access to the National Library's electronic resources collection.  The National Library's reader education program also sits within her responsibilities.  Prior to joining the National Library in 2006, Aileen worked for 10 years in the Australian National University Library in a number of roles including Electronic Resources Coordinator.  In her early career, Aileen spent several years as Government Publications Librarian in the Ontario Legislative Library in Toronto, Canada.

Liza Moss has worked in libraries in the TAFE, public and school sectors. Despite being approved as a teacher librarian after initial library training at Kuring-gai CAE in the 1980s, it was not until the twenty-first century that the DET finally appointed her as a full-time teacher librarian to Kotara High School.  She is currently in her seventh year at Kotara.

 

Liza’s first home computer had a DOS operating system which may have been good training for the use of OASIS but her interest in computers really began with Dubbo School of Distance Education in the early nineties where using technology to improve student outcomes was starting to take off. Since then she has enjoyed the status of faculty ICT guru (really easy in an English department) before finally doing formal training in the use of ICT in education thanks to a scholarship funded by Microsoft.

 

In 2008, a pair of her students won the secondary division of the DET’s Digital Learning Resource awards, and she contributed to Scan’s survey of school library websites. Her workshop will look at the construction of her website The Virtual Library and free online resources to assist in creating participants’ own digital aids.

Cheryl Fahey has worked for twelve years as a teacher librarian, and before that worked in the TAFE system.

 

For the past five years she has worked in the Catholic Schools System as an Education Officer in Learning Technologies

 

She works with approximately twenty-three schools, assisting staff in the integration of Learning Technologies into the Curriculum. Her particular interests are in the use of Web 2.0 in education.

Laureen Sheppard obtained her degree in teacher librarianship at Canberra (where she had to repeat the computing subject as she failed it the first time). Her first appointment was to Merriwa Central School in the Upper Hunter. From there she moved on to Randwick Girls High School and since 1993 she has been the Teacher Librarian at Katoomba High School in the Blue Mountains.

 

School libraries are “in her blood”; her mother was a library clerical assistant at Sir Joseph Banks High School and Laureen remembers helping her out whenever there was a train strike (something that happened quite regularly in the 70s) by filing catalogue cards. Yes, at the age of 11, she knew the difference between a shelf list card and author/title cards!

 

Her presentation will be about the wonderful world that is nswtl. She will also be talking about how OASIS has changed the role of the Teacher Librarian in DET schools, and how to get more out of it.

Peter Lewis is an editorial cartoonist for the Newcastle Herald. Born in Mungindi, Queensland in 1953, he graduated from Newcastle Art School in 1976. Lewis has had two solo exhibitions of his paintings.

 

Before Peter became the editorial cartoonist at The Newcastle Herald he was an exhibiting fine artist with several awards to his credit. His newspaper art has also won accolades, including first prizes in the National Rotary Cartoon Awards. Since joining the media he's used his portraiture skill to become a leading caricaturist, and is now in constant demand for functions, able to capture the likeness of a person in a way that's both fun and entertaining. His style can vary from outrageous to serious depending on each person's preference. Rather than create throwaway cartoons, Peter prefers to draw caricatures that can be treasured for years afterwards.

 

Peter illustrated a humour book for librarians in 2002.

 

He was 2008 Bald Archy winner of the People’s Choice Award for his cartoon entry Queen for a Day (featuring Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard)

Peter is also an experienced public speaker who can entertain entire audiences with his quick wit and fast brush on large sheets of paper. In fact, Peter draws continually while speaking, varying from political comments to portraits of members of the audience.