The Scoop From IRA

September is right around the corner: Back-to-School Time.

There's a lot going on at IRA this time of year, too.

We have the September issues of The Reading Teacher and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy coming out after the summer hiatus. The Reading Teacher just went through a complete redesign and has a new academic editorial team, Diane Barone and Marla Mallette. I haven't seen the proofs (hmmmm...maybe I'll go snooping through the publication servers and see if the pdfs are up...), but what I have seen looks pretty neat.

The new Reading Today is getting launched in September. The team has been crazy-busy with that endeavor, and it looks great! I'm excited to get my hands on the final copy. The website should be going live September 6th at www.reading.org/readingtoday. How's that for a little insider scoop? If you click that link before Sept 6th, you will see a Reading Today site, but it isn't the new Reading Today site, so make sure to check back.

On the ReadWriteThink end, we do try to set up some Back-to-School events or lessons or something, but being a website, we're always updating and uploading and improving the site. Summer's not too different then the rest of the year.

Back-to-School time is also IRA Convention time.

Now for the conventions group here at IRA, it is always convention time. It's a lot of work planning out an event that big, getting presenters in order, figuring out keynote speakers, arranging all the events, planning the travel and housing arrangements, working with exhibitors and the convention center. WHEW! I get tired just thinking about it.

But right around this time every year is when convention stuff starts to materialize in other places around IRA. For instance, the new convention website just launched. Very exciting! And if you want a walk-through for the site, we have you covered in the first episode of Convention Insider--where you can get all the inside scoops to IRA's 57th annual convention in Chicago (April 29 - May 2). Convention Insider will be a monthly video episode to give you all the inside information about Convention 2012.

ReadWriteThink has it's own convention projects as well. Not only do we have meetings with out advisory board and our NCTE partners, we try to meet up with some of our contributors and host our own sessions at convention. At the 2011 convention in Orlando, we had two sessions: Globetrotting With Blogs and STEM Poetry. I've heard a lot of good feedback about our sessions so far. If you were there, feel free to drop a comment right here and let us know what you thought.

If you missed out on either session, either because you didn't make it to Orlando or just didn't make it to our session, that's  just fine. We are putting them up online for you! STEM Poetry is up as of right now, and the Globetrotting With Blogs will be up this week, I think.

You will also be able to read more about Globetrotting With Blogs in the new Reading Today when it comes out next week. Our presenters, Laurie Henry and Lisa Zawilinski, have an article in the upcoming issue.

I think that will do it for this bit of blogging. A look into what's new and what's coming up in the new few weeks from IRA.

This is Wes Ford, your IRA (and Convention) Insider--I'll see you next time!