8th graders at Charlotte Country Day Middle School, NC, work on Movie Maker projects in Latin class.

Looking to add some virtual pizazz to your school’s educational canon? Join the nation’s many school librarians and educators who are already planning to dive into projects, programs, and day-long activities tomorrow in celebration of the second annual Digital Learning Day. The nationwide event aims to promote the use of technology in classroom learning.

Over at New Canaan High School, CT, library department chair Michelle Luhtala is asking students and faculty to download an eBook to their mobile devices, and setting up a support desk to help to anyone who needs it.

And at Murray Hill Middle School in Laurel, MD, Gwyneth Jones is tying Digital Learning Day into the school’s celebration of National History Day with custom QR codes on history displays throughout the library with the phrase: “I DARE you to Scan this Code!” Digitally-savvy history buffs will be sent to an infographic on how to get the most out of the Library of Congress.

Virtual tools are quickly being adopted in schools across the country, along with digital learning strategies and devices. Students often gravitate easily to these objects from laptops to tablets, e-readers to smartphones, plus they tend to be savvy users of online databases and web-based learning apps. But marrying these tools effectively into student learning—linking the fun to the educational element—is where many librarians and educators are focused today.

Sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, Digital Learning Day’s web site offers a plethora of tips on ways teachers and librarians can stitch some virtual know-how into lessons, plus there are toolkits linked to specific courses offering educators outlines for classroom projects.

Digital Learning Day also happens to coincide with a project students are working on at Charlotte Country Day Middle School, NC—creating five-minute films about a topic in Ancient Roman culture. The kids are editing the pieces on Windows Movie Maker, and faculty will be awarding film prizes like the Oscars, but aptly called “the Caesars.”

Megan Fink, the middle school librarian/advisor, believes the annual event can highlight how librarians are using technology in the classrooms in collaboration with teachers.

“We hear about the need for better technology in schools, but we don’t always hear how technology is being incorporated or else we focus on the online databases and online encyclopedias,” she says. “These are helpful resources to today’s students and can be a vehicle to let them be creative, which is our hope in film festival project.”

“We used to think of a library as a building with stacks of books,” says Skinner, who has served as high school principal of the St. Louis Park, MN, Catholic preparatory school since 2007. “Now we should think of it as a space where people come together to share ideas, be creative, access information, and even read. Instead of thinking of it so literally, we should think of it as a more active space and evolving.”

The expansive use of digital tools at Benilde-St. Margaret’s plays a major role in the success of the “no books” library, Skinner says. Since 2010, the entire school is 1:1, with each student receiving a MacBook plus user access to various online databases including Gale and ProQuest.

Another key to the library’s success? A robust community of neighboring branch and university libraries in the surrounding area. There are 50 public libraries alone in a 15-mile radius of the school, Skinner points out. “We weren’t saying no to hard copy books,” she says. “But let’s not duplicate what public and other libraries have.” The school’s librarian as well as teachers help students to complete requests online for the books they need and want from all of these local branches.

Before distributing the library’s print stacks to local centers and donation sites in Africa, says Skinner, she had teachers comb through the physical books and pull anything they wanted for their curriculums into classrooms. Then she allocated additional funding towards purchasing new and used fiction books in physical form, since her students, Skinner says, actually prefer to read this genre on the printed page like many adults do. These titles, too, went into classrooms.

Today, the library is nearly devoid of books save for a few reference titles and any books that students bring in themselves, Skinner says. She notes, however, that the library still is a work in progress. While it contains some tables and chairs where students can work alone or in groups, Skinner hopes for even more resources. On her wish list? An interactive white board, a big monitor where students “can throw up things on a screen” as they work collaboratively, and even more power stations—although she’s “not convinced” yet that a coffee shop, a popular request from students, is needed.

At the top of the wish list, though, is a new school librarian; filling this role soon is crucial because Moore’s current librarian is retiring after 20 years spent at Benilde-St. Margaret’s, Skinner explains. As Skinner combs through the candidates, she is looking for someone who shares her vision that student learning isn’t based solely on digital or physical resources, but a hybrid of both, she says.

“I think I want to be picky,” she adds.  “I want someone who understands the role of a librarian as an instructional partner, an information specialist, a program administrator, and a school leader. I think the role and importance of a librarian and a media specialist is highly underrated. I am excited to get someone with a strong vision.”

Photo: Jupiterimages, Brand X Pictures.

The study, from researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel, focuses on 9–12th grade students at three different high schools. Out of the 591 students surveyed, a whopping 95 percent said they regularly sent emails or texts during classroom lessons, while 94 percent said they browsed file-sharing sites or social media sites like Facebook. Listening to music is another popular classroom activity, according to 93 percent of students, while 91 percent admitted to actually talking on their phones during class. Overall, 60 percent of students use their cell phones in class, with 10th graders the most aggressive cell phone users and 12th graders picking up their phones the least, according to the survey.

This may present a sobering reality check to many educators in K–12 schools who have been looking for the best ways to incorporate digital tools into their classrooms. Already the number of Web-connected computers per student is increasing rapidly across the country. In 2000, the ratio of students to each Internet-connected computer was 6.6 kids per every device, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_109.asp); by 2008 (the latest year for which complete statistics are available), that number had jumped to 3.1 kids per device.

Successful school programs utilize digital devices in ways that keep kids engaged, such as conducting polls during civics lessons or searching for materials on a school library site. But in practice, there can be a big difference between the efficacy of using school-issued laptops and tablets compared with students’ own devices, at least among the older grades, according to the study.

With personal devices, students have more control over their own tools—and the ability to hide their online activities, particularly on phones with small screens.

“Students use their mobile phones in various ways—to surf the Internet and access social media, to listen to music, take photos, play games, and send text messages and photos,” say the researchers. “Based on our findings, there is almost no moment during any class when some pupil isn’t using their cell phone.”

Evan Frost

Meet the latest tech superheroes: school librarians. According to School Library Journal’s 2012 School Technology Survey, media specialists are leading the charge to bring new media, mobile devices, social apps, and web-based technologies into our nation’s classrooms.

So far, the results have been pretty impressive: 87 percent of school librarians report that they’re in charge of their library’s technology, with 60 percent adding that they’ve also introduced it into the classroom. Furthermore, 44 percent now serve on their school’s tech team, and in these budget-troubled times, when many library positions are on the line, that role may mean increased job security. In fact, 55 percent of the elementary, middle, and high school librarians that responded to our survey say that their tech skills have increased their value in administrators’ eyes.

What are many librarians’ biggest challenges? Not surprisingly, money and time—from the funds necessary to upgrade existing technology to the time needed to teach students how to use these tools. Case in point? Erica Braverman, a media specialist at Lindenwold School 5, an elementary school in New Jersey, says it’s tough to find time to make sure kids know how to use the latest technology competently. “Students need to learn how to use technology before they can effectively create with it,” writes Braverman. “It’s like learning to drive a car: if they don’t receive the proper instruction on how to drive, they will crash! We don’t want any Web-based crashes! But the time to teach students how to use the tools is limited, and classroom teachers have so much to teach as it is, it’s very challenging.”

Another trend we spotted? The number of schools creating one-to-one programs, in which each student is issued a tablet, a laptop, or some other digital device, has risen from 21 percent in 2011 to 27 percent in 2012. The use of tablets has especially soared, with 26 percent of librarians using them with students and teachers in 2012—more than double the 10 percent that reported using them in 2011. “We are in phase one of a one-to-one initiative putting netbooks in every student’s hands,” explains Laura Schachet, a media specialist at Webber Middle School in Fort Collins, CO. “They also make videos using flip cameras in a Web 2.0 class.”

Kids are also taking advantage of free Web-based resources, including Animoto, Google Docs, and Wordle; video equipment and software; digital subscriptions; and interactive whiteboards; plus photo equipment and software. And in the coming year, media specialists expect to see even more tablets, ereaders, apps, and ebooks on campus.

The use of ebooks, in particular, continues to climb, with 47 percent of media specialists saying they’re currently using them, up from 31 percent last year. Students are also reading digital books on a variety of devices—whether that’s the 63 percent who are perusing titles on library computers, the 17 percent who are reading on tablets, or the 21 percent who are fans of dedicated ereaders.

Mobile devices are also playing a larger role in learning, as 23 percent of schools are now allowing students to use their own devices in school—compared to a measly 13 percent in 2011. And in high schools, where students are more often encouraged to whip out their smartphones, the use of mobile devices has spiked from 29 percent of schools in 2011 to 49 percent today.

Nearly half of all schools have turned to social apps for classroom learning. The top app? Edmodo, a site that enables students and educators to network, share, and collaborate online. Launched in 2010, the platform is now used by 18 percent of school librarians to support teaching and student learning, followed by Google+, Delicious, and GoodReads. Where’s Facebook? Dead last, with a mere seven percent of respondents using the social network with their kids.

School librarians are also having an easier time gaining access to websites and apps. Sixty-nine percent have successfully negotiated with their administrators and school district to unblock YouTube, 66 percent have gotten the green light on blogging sites, and 30 percent managed to get Twitter unlocked. Only eight percent of media specialists report that their school’s filtering program “is severely restrictive.”

With purse strings still tight in most places, 78 percent of school librarians have opted for free apps—almost double the 42 percent who were using them in 2011. They are “the number-one tool used by librarians with students and teachers,” according to our survey, and an additional four percent of media specialists plan to incorporate tools such as Google Docs, Glogster, and Prezi into their lessons next year.

Not only do many media specialists find these apps budget-friendly, but also many, like Sabrena Wetzel, a librarian at Chicago’s Josephine Locke Elementary School, have noticed that their students have fun using them. “I used an online continent site to review where we wanted to send Flat Stanley, and…they had to figure out the continents,” writes Wetzel, who uses popular stories and technology to help her second graders learn about geography. “They really enjoyed it.”

And that may be the best outcome of all.

Laurie O’Neil, family outreach social worker at James M. Quinn Elementary School, at the school’s Mix It Up Day last year.

A Christian group’s protests have spurred some schools to pull their involvement from next week’s Mix it Up at Lunch Day—an 11-year-old program meant to reduce prejudice among students that’s sponsored by the Teaching Tolerance project, part of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

But the American Family Association (AFA) doesn’t see the program that way. Instead, the Christian association has launched a campaign encouraging families to keep their children home on October 30, describing the event as a means to “establish the acceptance of homosexuality into public schools…” The AFA did not return calls requesting comment.

Schools that have participated in Mix It Up at Lunch Day for a decade have reported that the event is a great way for all students to break down social barriers—and even make new friends.

Deerfield (MA) Elementary School, which is holding their event on Friday October 26, has sixth graders lead table discussions over three different lunch periods.

“The students will say, ‘I already know everyone at this table,’ yet that’s not where they normally sit,” says Jeanine Heil, Deerfield’s principal. “This has allowed them to get to know more people at the school.”

The Teaching Tolerance project encourages schools to run Mix It Up at Lunch  on October 30— allowing for students to mingle and meet kids they may not normally share their sandwich with on a regular school day. There are materials online, plus links to model schools, like Deerfield, including other ideas on how to mark the event.

About 2,755 schools are registered to participate this October, more than each of the last two years. However, Maureen Costello, Teaching Tolerance’s director, says that about 5,000 or more usually hold an event, but don’t officially sign up online. Because of the AFA’s protests this year, 250 schools asked to be unregistered—but then another 400 added their names to the official list, Costello said.

“Half [that unregistered] indicated they were doing so under duress and had every intention of doing the program on another day or under another name,” she says.

Eileen Hunter-Sweeney says her school hasn’t heard a peep about concerns about next week’s Mix It Up at Lunch Day at Hackberry Hill Elementary in Arvada, CO. Instead, the kids are excited about the chance to sit with new students, as they have every year since Teaching Tolerance launched the event.

“It’s an easy way to meet someone they want to sit with,” says Hunter-Sweeney, the school’s social worker. “They don’t have to have the nerve to walk across the cafeteria and meet someone new. They’re expected to.”

Students at the Mix It Up event last year.

They’re not necessarily expected to wear big purple hats at James M. Quinn Elementary School in Dartmouth, MA. But that’s what Laurie O’Neil, the school’s family outreach social worker will don at next Tuesday’s lunch, where teachers, students and staff are encouraged to mix up their clothing as well. “The kids love it,” says O’Neil.

At Lynn (MA) English High School, students are invited to two Mix It Up dinners each year—one in the spring and one in October, held earlier this week, where about 150 students paid $3 each, enjoyed a catered dinner of pasta and salad, played Pictionary, and were assigned tables by picking a random number.

“The goal is to work with kids within the school to improve school climate and make everyone feel welcome and accepted,” says Ginny Keenan, peer mediation and mentoring coordinator and Friends of Rachel Club advisor, which sponsors the event.

And that, ultimately, is the goal organizers hope to reach: students seeing each other for the individuals they are—and accepting them into the school community.

“We hope the schools use it as an approach to build a positive climate for students and respect for each other,” says Costello. “We don’t want students to relate to stereotypes but to each other.”

Challenging students to expand how they think about writing, national literacy and educational groups are asking teachers, librarians, writers, children and creators of all kinds to share what they write on Twitter and other social media channels on Friday, October 19.

Under the hashtag, #WhatIWrite, the National Writing Project (NWP), National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the New York Times Learning Network, among other groups (School Library Journal is a participant), are exploring the myriad forms that writing can take—from a list to a Facebook post, a podcast to a video piece.

“Our effort is to draw attention to the critical role of writing in our lives,” says Paul Oh, senior program associate with NWP. “I think we’re at this moment in education defining what it means to be literate.”

Encouraging students to find their literary voice and empowering them to craft pieces is more important than ever, particularly with the emphasis on writing in the Common Core, says Oh. As paper and pen yield to pixels and screens, students may need help understanding that the blog piece they craft, or the podcast they record, is adding to their literacy skills—and should be celebrated.

The online gathering is geared toward students, but everyone is encouraged to get involved. The digital event takes place the day before the Fourth Annual National Day of Writing—with the hope that children will tweet about what they’re composing at school and at home. The Twittersphere was already chirping with posts from excited participants, from learning coach Aaron Svoboda (@Mr_Svoboda) suggesting people tweet in haiku to sixth grade teacher Kevin Hodgson (@dogtrax), linking to a multimedia project he’s creating to celebrate the National Day of Writing.

Oh hopes more people will participate through blog pieces and social media posts using the hashtag. He wants to hear from school librarians in particular: he sees them as a core group thinking broadly about media and literacy, and a community linked to students of all ages. “Librarians have helped me see that video and audio composing is part of being literate today,” he says. “They’re often the ones helping us to expand our definition of writing.”

Children working on an “idea paint wall” in the library,
Cale Elementary School, Charlottesville, VA.

When it comes to libraries, educators Ira Socol and Pam Moran are very clear—it’s imperative that these institutions evolve in today’s technologically-driven world or risk fading into irrelevancy.

“I don’t think the physical space for libraries should ever go away,” says Socol, a special education technology scholar at Michigan State University’s College of Education in East Lansing. “But by the same token, every time technology has changed, the shape and form of libraries have changed.”

Socol and Moran, superintendent of the Albemarle County Public Schools in Charlottesville, VA, will tackle the shifting role of libraries in “Triggering Transformation” their “unkeynote” presentation at School Library Journal’s Leadership Summit. At the October 26–27 event in Philadelphia, the two will urge educators to consider the current digital environment and how it affects the way students and other patrons connect with information for both education and pleasure.

Ira Socol

Libraries, in particular, must develop the capacity to function as kinetic centers of learning and activity, where people come to engage, absorb, and create, according to Moran and Socol. Media specialists who understand that, say the two, will continue to play an important part in student learning. Those who see their role as simply manning the circulation desk are very likely to find their jobs at risk in a new era of education.

“Libraries have to be places where they’re making and searching content and also places where they engineer, sketch, and design themselves,” says Moran. “And librarians play an important role in doing that with young people.”

The potential risk, according to Socol, is that patrons will find and create libraries of their own—choosing spaces where they can engage and connect. One example, he says, is New York’s 24-hour Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, which you’ll find abuzz with activity at 2 a.m. Then there’s the local coffee shop where Socol has seen students gather to read and do their work.

“You see people wanting to be together,” he says. “And it’s not just about access to technology, it’s about people being together and sharing. So libraries have to rethink what they do. My town has a wonderful library that doesn’t attract teenagers because it filters the Internet in a way teens won’t tolerate. So the coffee shop becomes their library.”

To Moran it’s a simple scenario of patrons voting with their feet on whether a library works for them or not. That could be an adult choosing to go to a chain bookstore instead of the local branch of their public library, or a high school student who perceives the media center as a staid, dusty tomb. “In the schools where libraries are zones where kids are engaged with each other versus places where you have a ‘shush’ model, we have kids that skip classes to go to the library,” she says.

Neither Socol nor Moran thinks that libraries need disappear. In fact, they believe their place as a center for discovery and learning can flourish. The key, they say, is for librarians to understand the imperative that they’re competing for users’ attention—and that they find a way to not just recommend the next good read to users, but help patrons of all ages connect to material to enable a deeper understanding of the world.

“We have to acknowledge that if we try to maintain the status quo of our past, we could see the loss of libraries,” says Moran.

The Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization (CHPSPO) has spent the past seven months pushing Washington, DC, to open its coffers to school libraries to replenish shelves, upgrade library spaces and hire more librarians for K–12 students.

“We wanted to get librarians restored but also get District of Columbia Public Schools to make a commitment to get school libraries on their feet,” says Peter MacPherson, a member of CHPSPO and a parent of a 10th grader in public school.

MacPherson and his cohort are reacting to a decision last spring from the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) to pull dedicated funding from schools with fewer than 300 students and also allow schools with 300 or more students to divert funds for librarians to other purposes. That led to 58 of the 124 schools in the DCPS to start this fall without librarians — nearly double the 34 from the 2011/2012 school year. (DCPS did not respond to a request for information.)

Parents pushed back, asking for a meeting with Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who agreed to form a task force, says MacPherson, which is to be co-chaired by Barbara Stripling, former director of library services with the New York City Department of Education and current president-elect with the American Library Association. (Stripling did not respond to an interview request by press time.)

And CHPSPO has found other allies, namely Council Member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) who has proposed a bill, “The Public School Librarians, Art and Music Teacher Act of 2012,” requiring every DC public school to have a full-time librarian, art and music teacher. However a hearing has not yet been scheduled for the bill and if not set by early January, when the council period ends, the bill would have to be re-introduced next term, according to Council Member Phil Mendelson’s office, who chairs the committee considering the bill.

A $140 million budget surplus announced by D.C. finance officials last month is also cause for hope. CHPSPO would like $23 million of that surplus to be used for school libraries, to restore high school and middle school materials, purchase new ereaders, magazine subscriptions, and 40,000 ebooks, upgrade school library and hire 57 new full-time librarians.

With 2,758 signatures on their online petition demanding for a minimum of part-time librarians in each school, and a second protest scheduled in front of the Wilson Building at City Hall this Friday October 19, CHPSPO expects to bring more energy to the effort to restore school libraries for the betterment, they say, of student learning.

“We hope to have teachers, students and parents come to support our effort,” says MacPherson.

The government agency hopes to strengthen the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by including social networking sites, apps, and other platforms that weren’t around when the act originally passed in 1998. That law requires parental approval for kids under the age of 13 if they want to use sites aimed at children. Facebook and other sites can avoid complying with the law by opting to ban minors altogether.

But new rules, first proposed in August, seek to require that sites with “a disproportionately large percentage of children” —whether they’re aimed at children or not—also be required to follow COPPA. It also proposes that app developers, whose codes are used on sites aimed at children, also comply with COPPA’s rules. This could include sites like YouTube and Wikipedia, which, while not expressly aimed at children, often are used by them. Collecting information from those who use such high-trafficked sites could create privacy concerns that deter users from these sites rather than protect young users.

“We commend the FTC for trying to keep up with web technology, smartphones and apps,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director for the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. “But what we’re concerned about is the First Amendment, and verifying age and identification might mount barriers to freely access information on the Internet.”

Since COPPA is aimed at commercial sites, it doesn’t impact public or school libraries. (Although, the ALA does suggest librarians understand the law so they can explain it to parents and children). However, the ALA is monitoring developments of the proposed rules and did sign on with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and added comments to the proposed rules last month.

“Both of these proposals are too vague to give operators and developers a clear understanding of their obligation under the law and would create significant burdens on free expression and innovation,” write the two groups.

To Anne Collier, the problem also involves privacy and data control. With parents having to submit information in order to open additional sites, more data is collected on minors, thus creating more opportunities for the data to be used or potentially taken.

“You have that data spread in more places,” says the co-director of ConnectSafely.org. “If you require parents’ permission at every layer in the food chain, you have more data and more storage—and that makes people’s information more vulnerable.”

The FTC closed the public comment period on September 10, with the commission aiming for a final vote by the end of this fall.

“Too many teachers and librarians don’t market and advocate for themselves and what their library programs are all about,” says the teacher librarian at McLain Community High School. “So communities haven’t been hearing all the good things happening and that gives the impression they’re not needed.”

McQueen hopes to change that in his town and get his community rallying behind issue 3A and 3B. Issue 3A is a mill levy that would raise $39 million a year to add more teachers, reduce class sizes, and ensure teacher librarians stay in schools. The latter, 3B, would raise $99 million to help repair and maintain school sites. The goal is to prevent proposed budget cuts that could include the removal of all middle school librarians and the reduction of elementary school librarians to half time, says McQueen.

“I think this is a national issue,” he says. “But it’s a problem that can be prevented. Too often I have seen school librarians cave in.”

It’s an unusual move for a school librarian who once thought he didn’t like to read—not counting the manuals on Photoshop and four-wheel-drive cars that he would devour.

“When I started my career as a librarian, I secretly thought I didn’t like to read,” he says. “But then I found a lot of boys like to read nonfiction—and a light bulb went off and I realized I do love to read.”

McQueen wants to ensure that other kids have access to books, libraries, and librarians who can help them overcome any resistance to reading as well. Working with other school librarians in his district, McQueen has launched a Facebook page, mobilized walks, recruited colleagues to march in parades—and even borrowed $7,000 to buy stickers and a printer to cover his RV as a moving billboard. He parks daily at a local restaurant, where more than 16,000 cars catch his message to vote yes on 3A and 3B every day. (He’s done the math.)

McQueen plans to continue his campaign to save school libraries until Jefferson County’s November vote— and ensure children have a place where they can discover the joy of reading.

“If libraries don’t brag about the good things they do, then communities don’t think it’s a big deal to cut there,” he says. “So I am very feisty, and so are a handful of my colleagues.”

Author Jennifer Allison

Librarians now have another ally—psychic investigator Gilda Joyce has taken up their cause.

The pint-sized protagonist in Jennifer Allison’s mystery novels was up in arms this week about the Chicago teacher’s strike, pointing out that, like educators, children need an advocate—and appointed herself Children’s Union Representative, while also stressing the importance of school librarians.

“In the humble opinion of this Children’s Union Representative, the average American has no clue that the school librarian is becoming an endangered species these days—at exactly the time he or she is most needed to prepare kids to navigate the so-called “information age,” writes the character Gilda Joyce on Allison’s blog.

“And in case you think that a weekly opportunity to check out a book from the school library is a frivolous, “extracurricular” activity, consider conclusions of recent research linking access to books and reading for enjoyment with educational success regardless of socio-economic status.”

Allison, who has three children in Chicago’s public schools, drafted the blog post herself and stayed at home with her twin kindergartners and third-grade son for the past week before the strike ended Tuesday. While she sympathized with classroom teachers, she also says some concerns were left out of the conversation, such as the value of school librarians and libraries.

Allison’s books sometimes involve Gilda going to the library, like in her fourth novel, Gilda Joyce: The Dead Drop (2009, Dutton), where she visits the Library of Congress to help solve a mystery. Allison believes that great librarians and school libraries still play an essential role in education, even in today’s digital age where students turn to the web to help with their school work.

“There’s something important about asking questions and learning how to find an answer, and when librarians are really being teachers, that needs to be promoted,” says Allison. “I think people believe everything is becoming digital and with so many innovations you don’t need libraries any more. But I think you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

With Chicago teachers back in school as of Wednesday, and a new contract looming, it looks like Gilda won’t have a chance to represent kids at the union bargaining table. But she’s ready should the need come up again. (Allison is tied up working on a new series, “Iggy Loomis,” which comes out in July 2013. And there’s a new Gilda Joyce book in the works).

Gilda says it’s important that librarians stay on top of the needs of their young patrons—and not someone who “just notices kids when they’re talking too loud or chewing gum while keeping the really good books locked up in her own private stash,” she writes.

“We at the Children’s Union support our teachers, but we know that we’ll never guarantee that they will all be great,” writes Gilda. “Let’s at least keep those books and librarians around, so that kids like me have a chance to find their own way to the books that are sometimes our best teachers.”

Although kids today say they enjoy reading just as much as their peers did in 2005, they’re actually reading far less each day because they’re busy doing other things, says a new study by the National Literacy Trust, a UK-based literacy charity.

The report found that in 2005, four young people in 10 read daily outside of class, but at the end of 2011, only three young people in 10 enjoyed leisure reading. However, the number of children and young people who enjoy reading “very much” or “quite a lot” has remained static since 2005, with 50 percent today versus 51 percent in 2005.

“Young people’s lives are busier than ever before, with many activities and interest vying for their time,” says Christina Clark, author of “Children’s and Young People’s Reading Today” by email.

Just 57 percent of students picked up magazines in 2011, down from 77 percent in 2005. Comic reading also slid from 64 percent in 2005 to 50 percent in 2011. More than half (54 percent) of the 21,000 eight to 16-year-olds surveyed at the end of 2011 say they prefer watching TV to reading, and 17 percent said they would be embarrassed if their friends saw them reading.

However, the study found that when students read outside of class time—a growing number pick up more digital formats, with 7.8 percent of students reading ebooks in 2011, compared to 5.6 percent in 2010. Blogs, too, were up from 16.1 percent in 2010 to 17.5 percent in 2011, and social networking sites edged up slightly from 48.8 percent in 2010 to 49.9 percent in 2011.

Teens and adults in the U.S. also are turning online to read—with 42 percent of readers 16 and older flipping through ebooks, 29 percent reading on their phones, and 23 percent reading on tablet computers, according to a Pew Research Center study, “The rise of e-reading,” released in April.

While both studies didn’t specifically cover libraries or librarians, Jack Martin, president of the Young Adult Library Services Association and director of the New York Public Library’s Public Programs/Lifelong Learning division, says librarians can use their findings to ask themselves how they define reading —and if they discount ways in which kids engage with text. Reading websites and online manga are as legitimate as reading school books, Martin says.

“We need to help kids get over the stigma of not recognizing themselves as readers,” adds Martin. “Because they are readers—online and on their phone, and we have to recognize that and empower them to read more.”

In fact, children’s enjoyment of reading increased slightly from 2010 to 2011, with 68.1 percent of students aged eight to 11-years-old reporting that they found reading pleasurable in 2010, compared to 73 percent in 2011. And yet, less than half of older kids found reading fun, compared to young children, a finding that the report’s researchers called “truly staggering.”

Just 34.4 percent of children ages 14 to 16 reported that they “enjoy reading very much or quite a lot in 2010,” compared to the 73 percent of young students ages 8 to 11-years-old who answered the same.

School and public librarians who work with young kids may need to rethink what they define as reading and remind themselves that anytime they engaging with text—whether that’s on a gaming site or with Moby Dick—reading is happening.

“If kids are actually told they’re reading online, they might actually pick up that novel parents and teachers have been trying to get them to read,” says Martin. “It’s a matter of parents and educators to figure out what means, and they define it.”

Evan Marwell wants to measure your pipes. The self-described serial entrepreneur is founder and CEO of Education SuperHighway, a nonprofit group whose goal is assessing the state of broadband in our nation’s schools. So is there enough juice to support 21st-century learning in most schools? Not by a long shot, says Marwell.

“We have to get the right infrastructure in place, and I realized no one knew what the state of that was,” he says. “In particular, they don’t know the actual experience students and teachers are having in the classroom.”

For Patty Eyer, that experience has been mixed. The media specialist at South Orangetown Middle School in Blauvelt, NY, says there are times of the day when students simply can’t access the Internet.

“The teachers are being asked to integrate tech into their classes,” she says, “and yet we don’t have enough computer labs and laptops. And even if we did, we don’t have the bandwidth. We have Internet, with [Ethernet] drops throughout the school. Are they 100 percent effective and efficient? No.”

That’s a familiar story to Marwell. Three years ago, after joining the board of his daughter’s school, Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco, he questioned why classrooms didn’t have more technology. Marwell realized they simply lacked the necessary infrastructure.

It’s a pervasive problem. Eighty percent of our nation’s schools report that their broadband connections are inadequate to meet their needs, according to ‘The Broadband Imperative,” a May 2012 study by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). Schools will need connections of 100 megabytes per second for every 1,000 students and staff by 2014–2015—and one gigabyte per second by 2017–2018, concludes SETDA.

Starting September 10, Marwell hopes to help schools—and, more critically, the U.S. Department of Education—get an accurate read on the situation. That’s the day that Education SuperHighway goes live—enabling students, teachers, administrators, librarians, and other school personnel to log on to the site and have their connection speed analyzed within minutes.

The money is there to upgrade schools’ technology, says Marwell, pointing to the E-rate program, a federal fund that spends $2.25 billion a year to provide telecommunication services to schools and libraries. “We need to refine [E-rate’s] goals, so it’s not just about connecting classrooms, but how they connect,” he says. “E-rate is certainly providing enough investment.”

Schools that plan to have their networks read on Education SuperHighway can also assess their ability to access specific sites, such as YouTube and Wikipedia, which require higher bandwidth. The project, which is funded by private investors and manned by five volunteers, plus Marwell, has a goal for each school in the country to run at least 10 tests—conducted by 10 different people or the same person 10 times—to give Marwell’s crew one million tests to assess.

With that information, Marwell says they’ll be able to inform a larger plan to determine the funding needed to properly wire every school.

“This isn’t a money problem, it’s an information problem,” he says. “We don’t know who has what and what needs to be fixed. But there’s definitely going to be money to do this.”

Corey Michael Dalton

30—writer and editor Corey Michael Dalton plans to mark Banned Books Week by camping out there to demonstrate the value of our freedom to read.

Dalton’s decision to spend 24/7 there until October 6—except for bathroom breaks—stems from the Vonnegut Library’s fight against Missouri’s Republic High School, which last year removed copies of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five from the library and relocated them to a place only accessible by parents.

After Republic High School’s move to restrict the book, the Vonnegut Library offered to send free copies to any Republic High School student who requested one. To date, the library has mailed 75 copies.

“We thought this would be perfect for Banned Books Week,” says Dalton, the editor of U.S. Kids Magazine’s Jack and Jill, Turtle and Humpty Dumpty. “The book is locked up, and I would be locked up in the front window. It’s a symbolic thing that this is how the book is now allowed to live in the free world.”

Launched in 1982, Banned Books Week typically takes place the last week of September and highlights the importance of intellectual freedom, while also reminding readers how many books are removed regularly from school libraries and classrooms across the country.

Slaughterhouse Five, an anti-war story of a World War II soldier who travels through time after being abducted by aliens, was one of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books from 2000 to 2012, according to the American Library Association (ALA), which along with the American Booksellers Association, the  American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Freedom to Read Foundation, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and others, sponsor the event.

For those with the urge to check-up on Dalton, a webcam will be installed and viewable from the library’s main website, where he’ll also be blogging. Those who want to pop in and say hello will be able to catch some of the library’s other activities for the week, which will include an evening reading of banned books and Skype visits from authors Michael Dahle, Ben H, Winters, to filmmaker Michael Moore. While all the titles have yet to be decided, Julia Whitehead, the library’s executive director, promises “a wonderful passage from Slaughterhouse Five.”

But don’t expect Dalton to sit on his heels and read all week either. The editor isn’t taking vacation time for his public protest, and says he’ll be working on his magazines.

“They’re setting me up with a desk, laptop, and networking me into my computer at work,” he says. “The November/December issues are going to be on the wall, and staff is going to be bringing me pages to edit and approve that week.

Born in Indianapolis, IN, Vonnegut later moved away. But the library is located in his hometown. Since opening its doors in January 2011, it allows anyone to check out books—titles that are mostly classics and donated to the library.

Although the library isn’t city-funded, it offers WiFi and tours—all free to visitors who chose to visit the “laid-back” spot, Whitehead says. “We’re not going to hound people if they’re a few days late with their book. You just sign a notebook page and we take your contact information, and look at your driver’s license. We trust you’ll bring the book back, and we haven’t been burned.”