2024 Power Up: A Leadership Conference For Youth Services Managers & Staff

Friday Closing Keynote – Mizuko (Mimi) Ito, Ph.D.

Mimi Ito is a leading researcher of technology and learning who has studied young people’s engagement with digital technology for thirty years in the United States and Japan. She is Director of the Connected Learning Lab and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine. She has two PhDs from Stanford University, in Education and Anthropology, and an undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. She had research appointments at Keio University and the University of Southern California before joining UC Irvine.

Her work centers on how to tap student interests and digital media to fuel learning that is engaging, relevant, inclusive, and socially connected. For over a decade, she directed research for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative which invested $200 million in research and innovation. She then went on to establish the Connected Learning Lab at UC Irvine, and an affiliated nonprofit, the Connected Learning Alliance, to continue research, innovation, and social impact projects in technology and learning.

In addition to the MacArthur Foundation, she has been awarded grants by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Pivotal Ventures, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, Google, Intel Research, Microsoft Research, the Abe Fellowship Program, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and is the recipient of the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies from the American Educational Research Association.

She has authored and edited eight books, published by MIT, New York University, and Yale University Press as well as numerous articles and reports. Her co-authored book, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Youth Living and Learning with New Media is widely recognized as a foundational book in the field, and a tenth anniversary edition was released by MIT Press in 2019. Her work has been widely cited in academic literatures and has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio. Her web site is at http://www.itofisher.com/mito.

Friday Post-Conference Workshop
Taking a Stand for True Play

with Carissa Christner, Madison Public Library

Friday, March 22 2:00 – 4:00pm
at Madison Public Library
$100 (workshop only)

Would you like to reduce the amount of time spent planning programs for children AND increase the positive outcomes for participants? In this workshop, we will be discussing the various ways that Madison Public Library has embraced the Anji Play approach since 2016 and the benefits for staff, patrons and outreach partners. The workshop will include a tour of the Central Library children’s area play spaces as well as an opportunity for adult play during the workshop, so be sure to wear comfortable shoes!

By the end of this workshop, participants will have a deeper understanding of:

• the Anji Play approach, started in the Kindergartens of Anji County in China
• the difference between a “playful” program and a program designed for child-led play.
• the powerful benefits of adults stepping back and letting kids take the lead in play.
• how to create programs and spaces that encourage child-led play in both large and small libraries whether funded by a generous grant or making it work on a shoestring budget.

Carissa is a self-described “playbrarian” at Madison Public Library in Madison, WI. When the founder of Anji Play, Ms. Cheng, came to Madison for a visit in 2016, Carissa had the good fortune to hear her speak and it changed her life.  She is now a passionate advocate for child-led play and constantly seeks ways to empower adults to step back and observe children at play closely and with deep curiosity. Carissa has been able to visit the kindergartens of Anji County, where Anji Play developed, three times and was a speaker at the First International True Play Conference.

Friday Post-Conference Workshop
Materials Challenge Readiness

with Megan Schliesman and Tessa Michaelson Schmidt, Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC)

Friday, March 22 1:30 – 4:00pm
at Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC)
$150 (lunch included)

We’ll walk through ways to be prepared for and respond to concerns and challenges in this workshop that will provide opportunities to acknowledge and then decenter fear in order to focus on the reasons why libraries do what they do when it comes to providing community members with diverse materials and a wide range of choices. We encourage all participants to review their library’s mission and selection and reconsideration policy and related procedures in advance.

Megan Schliesman is a librarian and assistant director at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Megan has co-authored the annual CCBC Choices publication since 1993, and, with Kathleen T. Horning and Ginny Moore Kruse, coauthored Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults, 1991-1996. Among her other responsibilities at the CCBC, Megan manages the CCBC Intellectual Freedom Information Services, and writes the “What IF . . . Questions and Answers on Intellectual Freedom” forum. She recently co-chaired the American Library Association/Association for Library Service to Children (ALA/ALSC) Morris Seminar (2022). In the past she’s chaired the ALA/ALSC Awards Program Review Task Force, and co-chaired the ALA/ALSC 2018 Charlemae Rollins President’s Program. She chaired the ALA/ALSC 2011 Laura Ingalls Wilder Committee (now Children’s Literacy Legacy Award), and served on the ALA/ALSC 2005 Newbery Award Committee. She has also chaired numerous Charlotte Zolotow Award Committees (administered by the CCBC).  Megan was the recipient of the 2018 Lee A. Burress Intellectual Freedom Award from the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English, and the 2014 WLA/WEMTA Intellectual Freedom Award. She is past chair of the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association’s Intellectual Freedom Special Interest Group, and a past member of the Wisconsin Library Association Intellectual Freedom Roundtable board. Megan is a former member of the ALA/ALSC Board of Directors, and a former member of South Central Library System Board of Trustees in Wisconsin. She is also a former columnist for Library Sparks magazine. She has a B.A. degree in English/Writing from UW-Whitewater with a minor in Women’s Studies, and a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Tessa Michaelson Schmidt is the Director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tessa previously served as the Assistant State Superintendent of the Division for Libraries and Technology at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), and as the Youth and Inclusive Services Consultant at DPI.  She also worked as a public librarian at the  Ruby M. Sisson Memorial Library in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where she was Assistant Director; as a librarian at the CCBC; as a school librarian at Wingra School in Madison; and as a teacher at Wingra School. Tessa chaired the American Library Association/Association for Library Service to Children (ALA/ALSC) 2019 Batchelder Award Committee, served on the 2016 ALA/ALSC Caldecott Committee, and has chaired or served on several ALA/ALSC task forces and process committees. She has also been a member of several CCBC Charlotte Zolotow Award committees. During her previous tenure as a CCBC librarian, Tessa coauthored several editions of CCBC Choices, the library’s annual best-of-the-year list.  Tessa was the Wisconsin Library Association Librarian of the Year in 2014.  She has a B.S. in Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.