It made sense to band together to buy ebooks as a single region rather than purchasing as 22 small districts. Buying as a group helped, but our rural schools still didn’t have new money to spend on ebooks. For this project, a blended-funding solution meant starting with librarians, allocating a portion of their existing state library materials aid to the regional purchases while seeking additional resources from classroom or textbook funding.

The goal was twofold: pool money from individual libraries to leverage group purchasing, and increase the efficient use of existing funding. New York State provides $6.25 in state aid per student to each district for library materials. Asking librarians to give up even 10 percent or 20 percent of their limited book budgets was met with entirely reasonable resistance. For this plan to work, participating librarians had to retain control of their money throughout the selection process.

Working together with our librarians, we found inspiration in crowd-sourced funding sites like Kickstarter.com. On Kickstarter, people post projects to raise money from individual donors. For example, the Harvey Pekar Estate crowd-funded the creation of a memorial statue of the comic book author for the Cleveland Heights public library. Kickstarter’s site tracks pledges until the fundraising goal is reached. Then, people who pledged are charged and the project receives the money. We thought we could use a similar crowd-funding method to let librarians select books in a consortium.

The process we settled on is based on the regional price break point, when the number of individual libraries buying the ebook for their building meets the cost of buying the book for the whole region. For example, an ebook might cost one library $20 and the region $200. If 10 libraries plan on buying that book, we might as well pool the money and buy it for the region. Our selection tool is built around pledges; librarians indicate that they would allocate their money to buy the book individually. When the number of pledges reaches the set break point, the book is purchased for the region by pulling in the pledges, which will fund it.

This couldn’t have worked without three keys. First, our member librarians helped us find a delicate balance between a library giving up some limited funding and retaining control. We also credit the publishers that were willing to consider a new business model and provide regional pricing: ABC-CLIO, Britannica, Chelsea House, Lerner, and Rosen. The final key was Mackin, which worked with publishers on pricing to make this regional buying possible. Mackin’s VIA platform for digital content will give the kids in our region easy access to the collection on computers, iPads, and Android tablets.

Working through an aggregator was a deliberate choice. I might have been able to get lower prices directly from publishers and my amazing team could probably have developed a reading platform, but I wanted this project to be replicable and sustainable. I believe that this model can work for districts and consortia around the country.

Christopher Harris (infomancy@gmail.com) is coordinator of the school library system of the Genesee Valley (NY) Educational Partnership.

LeVar Burton shows off his book-themed iPad case during our interview at the Essex House Hotel in NYC, February 6, 2013.

Thirty years after its debut, most of us can still remember every word of the theme song and hum its melody. That’s the legacy of, and the power behind, the Reading Rainbow brand, says LeVar Burton, host and executive producer of the original Peabody Award-winning PBS television series and now co-founder of its reiteration as a subscription-based tablet app. Burton’s RRKidz launched the app late last year exclusive to the iPad—but that’s only the very beginning of the brand’s rosy future, he tells School Library Journal.

We sat down one-on-one with Burton, Curator in Chief of RR Kidz, last week at New York City’s historic Essex House Hotel while he was in town to promote the miniseries-themed episode of the PBS series Pioneers of Television alongside fellow Roots actors Louis Gossett Jr., Leslie Uggams, and Ben Vareen.

Over a pot of green tea, Burton took time out of his busy schedule to give SLJ an interactive demo of the new app and to chat candidly about children’s literacy; what’s next for the Reading Rainbow brand as it eyes expansion to other platforms, devices, and the Web; his ongoing mission to create lifelong readers; and his efforts to advocate for access to books and technology for all kids.

You’ve said previously that Reading Rainbow was the hardest, most rewarding thing you’ve done in show business. Is that still true for you?
I had to learn a new business. I had to learn the technology business. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. When you think about reinventing a well-known and beloved brand, the thing that kept us up nights was the fear of failing to meet expectations. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done…and the most rewarding. I love that I am able to focus at this point in my life on the mission, the continuing mission, of getting kids excited about literature and reading.

After the show was cancelled, did you immediately know you wanted to re-launch the brand?
It was a result of the outcry. That’s when [business partner] Mark and I looked at each other and recognized, ‘Wait, there’s thirst out there for the brand.’ So we knew we were going to do something with the brand, and we knew it wasn’t television. We knew it was in the digital space, but we didn’t know what it was. We thought Web, we thought virtual world.  But when the iPad came out, it was like, ‘Holy moley! Now, we don’t have to search for a vertical, we have the vertical.’ Reading Rainbow is about the exploration of literature, quality literature for kids that is tied to the real world. Bingo.

So creating a new version of the TV show wasn’t considered?
Reading Rainbow, when we [started as] a television show, it was about using the prevailing technology of the day to steer kids back in the direction of the written word. That technology happened to be TV. In the 80s, that’s where kids were hanging out. Today? Not so much. Television is just one screen that they interact with during the course of the day.

What was your favorite episode of the show, or new video that you have filmed for the app?
Which is your favorite niece or nephew? We did so many cool things! I learned to fly a plane. I learned to scuba dive.

We are the only people ever to film the changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, DC. They let us take our cameras into the old guard quarters underneath the tomb, where that special regiment of soldiers prepares. They let us into the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, where we make our nation’s money. They let me in with my camera! We’re Reading Rainbow! I think we have earned that kind of access because we earn that kind of respect.

Being the host of Reading Rainbow is the best job in the universe. And that comes from the man who was the chief engineer of the Enterprise.

Is there a book you featured on the show that was special, that you think all kids should read?
Amazing Grace [by Mary Hoffman, Penguin,1991]. Why? Because it is an opportunity to talk to kids about the value of your own unique identity.

Can you tell us about your experience with Jimmy Fallon (who once performed the theme song in the style of Jim Morrison, and interviewed Burton on air for the debut of the app)?
We made history! We debuted this app on the Jimmy Fallon show. No one has ever done that before—you promote your book, you promote your movie, your television series. It was the first for an app. Jimmy and his sister are huge fans.

PBS impacted my generation so much, but that’s not necessarily true of today’s generation of kids. Do you agree?
Exactly. I love that you brought up PBS. When we were growing up, our parents knew that they could put us in front of the TV and turn on PBS and walk out of the room, knowing that they didn’t have to know the name of the show, they just knew that it was good for you. My dream for our kids is that we become like a PBS for parents in the digital realm.

Can you tell us about the new app and what it offers kids?
At this point, we have over 250 books and over 30 videos, and we add three new books and one video every week, because it’s a subscription model and we have to continually refresh the content. And we also announced our partnership with National Geographic Kids. I narrate about 12 percent of the titles, and I have handpicked the rest of the storytelling team. They’re storytellers that I know.

We know the kids want the bells and whistles; that’s why these devices are so engaging, because they’re interactive. So we have spent an awful lot of time thinking about what way we wanted those interactions to be. When you are in the ‘read to me’ mode, you’ll see a prompt [to control movement of features on the screen] but in the ‘read by myself’ mode, you have access right away; you’re in control of the environment. So that’s something that’s really, really important.

The idea is that it is about adventuring, exploring, and finding books that you want to read.

The way each book is displayed and handled on the platform seems very carefully planned. Can you tell us more about the process of bringing books into the app?
[It’s] very, very purposeful. Every decision that you see reflected in the app has been incredibly—to the best of our ability—incredibly well thought out.

One of the challenges is the different format sizes of books and fitting them all in. The iPad is not letterboxed, so it’s an odd size, so there have been a gajillion (actual count, a gajillion) problems we have had to solve in putting this together.

We have a team now of 11. We built a tool to convert PDFs into books. We’re acquiring a tool now to inject new content—already made digital books—into our distribution platform which is, after all, what we are. We’re a distribution platform for books, videos, and games. There’s a game in every book, in that there’s a matching game at the end of every book using the book’s original art.

Have you tabled some books that you would really like to feature?
Yes! We’re waiting for our technology to improve. Absolutely. And guess what? It will.

Has it been difficult to get the book rights from the publishers for the new app?
It’s gotten a lot easier. We went to the publishing companies and I said, ‘Look, you know me. You know how I feel about children’s literature. I know this is all really new and scary for y’all. I’m here to help you in a couple of ways. Number one, we want to convert your book, and we want to test this out. Now you are our launch partners. Give us your book. We will treat them as if they were our own, with the same respect that we did on the television series. Also, we know that you or anyone who is producing a digital children’s book these days has a basic and fundamental problem of discovery. In a sea of millions of apps, how do you get your book, your app seen? We’ve got a pretty well-known brand featuring quality children’s literature and we have a brand ambassador, which is our unfair advantage.’ [laughs]

At the moment, the iPad is the only device that is widely accessible for those with disabilities.
For now. At this very now moment, yes. But that’s going to change, so rapidly.

So once other devices catch up, Reading Rainbow will expand to them?
We’re coming out on an Android platform very, very,  soon. We haven’t made the official announcement yet but the platform partner we will be announcing is a market leader.

As you know, our audience is librarians. Are you familiar with that group and the work they do getting books into the hands…
…of kids! And getting the right book into the hand of the right kid. Yes! See it’s the librarian who sees the kids on a regular basis and gets to know a little about the kid and can really point the child in the right direction, because a librarian is always trying to serve the needs of the reader. So that element of curation that is so important to us.

We feel like we are helping kids find the right books for them, and in that sense we have that same goal, that same mission in common with teachers and librarians.

You know, I want to speak to ALA, and we had a big meeting yesterday at the NY Public Library,  so we are looking at some initiatives that will move us in that direction.

Recent studies show that many kids are reading ebooks on desktop computers. Beyond Android devices, will the app be available on the Web?
Yes! Yes! We’re going to have a Web version. Sooner rather than later. This app is [only] our first product. We have a team of 11 so we’re stretched a little thin right now…please know that the Web version is very much on my mind.

What are your goals in terms of universal access and library access? Not necessarily what’s in the works already, but what would you like to see?
I want this app to be ubiquitously available. And I know in order for that to happen we need to be A. platform agnostic and B. there have to be more tablets in the marketplace at affordable price points.

Won’t these kinds of changes take an exceptionally long time?
That’s because there’s a larger issue, isn’t there? The larger issue is the public will—and the private will—to get it done. If we fail to put a tablet computer in the hands of every child on this planet, we will have failed our responsibilities as the elders of this generation. That means that everybody, all the stakeholders, have to come to the table. All of the stakeholders. I mean the Apples, and the Samsungs and everybody. And the U.S. [Department of Education].

Have you been working with teachers, the D.O.E, towards this goal?
Believe me, teachers are very much on my mind. I have regular conversations with [U.S. Secretary of Education] Arne Duncan. He is acutely aware of the government’s need to shift its priorities. I’ll say it, because he can’t: We’ve spent far too much money on the machinery of war over the last decade and a half. We have sacrificed at least one generation of American children because they have not been educated, according to a standard that America believes it should have. We have spent a lot of time, through No Child Left Behind, teaching to the test—as opposed to teaching to get kids turned on about learning. So there are some real significant challenges to universal access. And it’s not a question of which platform you’re on. It’s a question of, Do we have the will, the political will, to get it done?

So you are looking at the issue from a top-down approach?
I’m trying to do whatever I can to advance this cause. My mother was an English teacher. My older sister is a teacher. My son is in education, as are both of my nieces and my cousin. Education is the family business—and because I happen to have this platform, this bully pulpit, I’m going to use it.

Here’s the bottom line for me: I genuinely believe we have the ability to revolutionize the way we educate children. Seriously. It’s right there. And here’s how: Every culture on the planet has a tradition of storytelling. Take whatever information you want to disseminate, be it language, science, news, whatever. Embed it in storytelling, in the storytelling idioms that are native to the child. Put those interactive stories on tablet devices and we will revolutionize the way we teach children in this world.

For example, teachers can place books—such as K–12 NIMAC textbooks or other assigned reading—on a Bookshelf to be downloaded later by students, or give direct access to students with individual  memberships so they can log in and read using the Web Reader. Selections can be organized by interest, author, or subject, or educators can devise their own systems.

“The Bookshelf makes it easy for teachers to download the year’s reading list for multiple students at once, thus saving time,” says Justin Kolbe, assistive technology specialist. “It’s a good way of getting all the reading material organized in one place.”

The Bookshare Web Reader is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE 9.0 and above. It allows readers to adjust font size, colors and display format, and takes advantage of Google Chrome’s features to allow students to read books multi-modally, with word-by-word highlighting and text-to-speech.

Bookshare is a Benetech literacy solution, funded by awards from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP).

Today, more than 73,000 educators—including reading teachers, assistive technologists, and specialists—use the Bookshare library to support students who are blind or who have low vision, a physical disability such as cerebral palsy, or a severe reading disability such as dyslexia.

“These latest improvements to the Bookshare reading experience align with our long range vision to provide individuals with print disabilities equal access to content,” says Betsy Beaumon, vice president and general manager of the literacy program at Benetech. “We expect members will read more because they will access their books more quickly and have just one click to begin reading.”

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.”

BiblioBoard. BiblioLabs LLC. Version 2.0.1. 2012. iOS, requires 5.0 or later. Free. $9.99 to $15.99 for individual anthologies. 

Gr 10 Up–As first glance, the Biblioboard app is equal parts inspiring and overwhelming. It offers more than 100 anthologies, and, within each curation, access to free content.

The 60-plus volumes in Brontë Sisters: A Historical Collection provides selections under “Novels,” “Poetry,” “Biographical Works,” “Critical Essays,” and “Images.” It affords a rare glimpse into the sisters’ lives through traditional biographies as well as a series of well-organized letters to and from Charlotte, Anne, and Emily, their father, and friends. Readers can also examine portraits of the women, their home, and a reproduction of each sister’s pen name signature, all of which are likely to ignite a discussion of a woman’s place in the literary world of the 19th century. It would be difficult to find a more complete anthology of the Brontës’s work in one place with such a small footprint.

John Keats: A Historical Collection presents such telling works as A Day with Keats, by his contemporary May Clarissa Gillington Byron. There are also romantic gems such as Keats’s Letters to Fanny Brawne, written to his fiancée from Rome before the English poet succumbed to tuberculosis at age 25.

Keats’s poems are represented as is his correspondence. Completing the anthology, which totals more than 70 volumes, are “Memoirs,” “Critical Essays,” “Souvenirs,” and “Images.” Viewing pages of the original editions of the poet’s work evokes the romanticism these verses warrant, while the color illustrations add a dimension and context not often found in other resources.

On the topic of Socrates: Father of Western Philosophy, there are a number of biographical and contextual essays that offer a look at the philosopher’s daily interactions and the era in which he lived. Scholarly revelations about Socrates’s influence on the writings of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes are also presented. The depth and language of these works makes them most suited for advanced placement or college students, but items such as the reproduction of a papyrus Fragment of a Third Century Copy of Plato’s ‘Republic’ provides relevance for any reader.

While some may value these collections as primary source material or historical artifacts, there is much here for students of literature and philosophy to peruse. They’re sure to find something that speaks to them.—Danielle Farinacci, Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, San Francisco, CA

Pyramids 3D: Wonders of the Old Kingdom. Zahi Hawass and Sandro Vannini. Touch Press/ Heritage World Press/ Laboratoriorosso; 2012; Version 1.0.1, iOS, requires 5.1 or later. $13.99.
Gr 6 Up–On opening this app, viewers soar over the Giza Plateau under the bright desert sun while the sounds of birds and the wind are heard in the background. In all, there are nine “Places” to visit at this ancient necropolis from King Khafre’s Tomb to The Great Pyramid. Tapping on the entrance to a monument will bring viewers inside. Once there, they can take a virtual tour of the pyramid or tomb, methodically following arrows and using the floor plan as a guide, or touching the floors and walls to move about independently within the labyrinths. The “Expert Intros” for each location, the only audio provided within this app, are informative, yet all too brief.

A menu at the top of each screen provides an index of sites to explore and “Quick tips” explains how to navigate within the monuments. Illuminated areas signal statues, wall carvings, and drawings that offer additional information. A tap on a picture label provides a description of the work. Throughout the app, scenes offer a “Then and Now” feature allowing users to toggle between the clean lines, vibrant colors, and smooth surfaces that artists imagine these walls and items had millennia ago, and the fading colors and damage wrought by time, and in some cases, vandalism.

An “Objects” option presents viewers with a collection of 40 artifacts, each of which can be enlarged and rotated 360 degrees. The clarity of detail is noteworthy. Particularly stunning is the “Golden Mask of Tutankhamun,” which shines as users tip their iPads to fully appreciate the pairing of ancient artistry and modern technology. Other artifacts include statues and statuettes, a gold-handled knife, and a piece of jewelry. For each item, details (size, material, etc.) and notes are provided.

The accompanying text offers chapters on topics ranging from “A Brief History of Ancient Egypt” to “The Discovery of the Solar Boats.” Fascinating details along with a timeline and numerous images of the site and artifacts are included. A postscript by the author and noted Egyptian archeologist Hawass discusses recent political developments in Egypt, the plans for the Giza Plateau, its protection, and continued excavation.

Both the spectacular photography by Sandro Vannini and superb 3-D imaging will impress viewers, who will undoubtedly wish the app contained a larger collection of images and locations to explore. A splendid production.–Deirdre Reddington, Uniondale High School, Uniondale, NY

McGraw Hill SmartBook

Despite the much-publicized grumblings about CES being less relevant this year due to the direct absence of big players like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, there were clear trends and several standout products at the January Consumer Electronics Show, which will likely impact K–12 education. Here’s a short list of highlights from CES, starting with an overarching trend that’s bound to affect a wide range of devices in coming years.

The future of display technology, foretold. Just the other day, I eyed a ceiling-mounted projector in my library that cost over $5,000 back in 2000 and still works, but just can’t cut it in today’s wide-screen, HD world. Considering the prospect of replacing it, I wonder, where will it end? Well, thanks to CES, I think I know: Ultra HD. It’s the display standard that’ll set the new bar for virtually all screens in the future.

Also known as 4K or Quad HD, Ultra HD was originally driven by digital cinema’s requirement for a high-def display dense enough to look good on really huge screens. Ultra HD displays, those boasting a horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels (a common one is 3,840 x 2,160), are definitely headed for a living room TV near you. At about 8.3 megapixels, Ultra HD has four times the pixels of HDTV. It’s not just about TV, though: Panasonic debuted a 20-inch Windows 8 tablet at CES with 4K resolution, and Qualcomm announced that its newest Snapdragon 600 and 800 mobile processors are now engineered to handle Ultra HD, too, so expect Ultra HD to make its way onto the screens of even the smallest personal devices. We’ll also see more OLED screens in the marketplace, with their richer colors and higher contrasts. Samsung has introduced super-thin, bendable, nearly unbreakable OLED displays. The technology, called Youm, could make curved screens and other yummy new display form factors commercially possible. Plus, Youm mojo could prove valuable in school settings where only the toughest screens survive. Some think Ultra HD could be the ultimate display resolution, the finest display we’ll ever need… or want. Do I believe that? No. But it should satisfy us for a while.

Adaptive ebooks and courseware. Imagine textbooks that actually revise themselves on-the-fly to adjust to an individual reader’s comprehension. That’s the idea behind SmartBooks from McGraw Hill Education. They’re multi-platform etextbooks, readable online or off, that adapt to how students respond to periodic review questions, reinforcing material that needs more attention. The company uses student behavior models to create the most efficient path toward subject area mastery. McGraw Hill Education is yet to set SmartBook prices, but expects them to be comparable to standard ebooks. Pearson was also reportedly at CES promoting similar adaptive products.

Gaming pioneer Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, also believes that software that adapts to learners—keeping them on the optimum edge of their ability—maximizes academic achievement and learning enjoyment. That’s the idea behind his company, BrainRush. See how it works yourself: I challenge you to visit www.brainrush.com and take one of their sample lessons. Unless you immediately nail the drill, you’ll feel the software adjusting to your mistakes. I took the lesson on South American countries and could sense the software repeatedly trying different ways to get me to stop confusing Guyana with nearby French Guiana. Eventually, I caught on. And Paraguay is north of Uruguay… duh.

Robotics for students of all ages. Fans of Lego Mindstorms robotics kits, popular in classrooms and homes for well over a decade, will be happy to hear that a new set, Lego Mindstorms EV3, is scheduled for release this spring. The $350 kit reportedly includes 17 different bot designs. Builders can follow plans on paper or tablets, or they can invent new robots freestyle. The kit includes a variety of new and improved sensors and capabilities, has a Linux-based, programmable brick that aspiring hackers can mess with, and is compatible with Mindstorms NXT components. Students can remotely control their robotic creations with apps for iOS and Android, and curricular support is available at www.legoeducation.us.

While the Mindstorms kit is recommended for ages 10 and up, younger kids can have hi-tech fun with Cubelets from Modular Robotics. Cubelets are blocks that simply snap together; no wiring or programming is needed. Each block has either a sensor, logic, or action function. Put them together in different ways and they do different things. Kits start at $159.95.

The XO Learning Tablet. Remember the One Laptop Per Child initiative and the so-called $100 laptop from back in 2005? Well, the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit has now unveiled a commercial product, the XO Learning Tablet. Manufactured by Vivitar, it will be available in the U.S. through retailers, including WalMart, sometime next fall for a price rumored to be around $149. The 7″ tablet will feature front-and rear-facing cameras and can function as a standard Android tablet in parent mode, or a heavily skinned, child-centered, and career-focused Android tablet for kids as young as three. When it’s in child mode, young users choose a professional aspiration—say scientist, for example—and then get access to a vetted set of apps relevant to scientific pursuits. (Alas, school librarian is not currently a career choice.) A robust parental dashboard gives adults full control over their child’s access and provides detailed reports on how the tablet is being used.

And who knows what else? One of the great things about CES is that, warts and all—and no matter how cringe-worthy its keynote address might happen to be—the annual trade show retains its spirit of playful innovation. That was demonstrated this year by the number of creative products at CES that were funded through the grassroots online platform Kickstarter. Who can foresee how these products, no matter how whimsical they seem now, might wind up touching the future? Consider the Puzzlebox Orbit Brain Controlled Helicopter. While it may seem like nothing more than an impractical plaything today, the company is encouraging the development of the open-source BCI (brain-computer-interface) that controls the toy copter. BCI technology is already impacting “serious” fields like vision science and prosthetics, and—who knows?—it could even wind up affecting the most serious profession of all, education.

“We are seeing that kids today are drawn to both print books and ebooks, yet e-reading seems to offer an exciting opportunity to attract and motivate boys and reluctant readers to read more books,” says Francie Alexander, Chief Academic Officer, Scholastic. “While many parents express concern over the amount of time their child spends with technology, nearly half do not have a preference of format for their child’s books. The message is clear—parents want to encourage more reading, no matter the medium.”

According to the study—the fourth biannual report from Scholastic and the Harrison Group, a marketing and strategic research consulting firm—the number of kids who have read an ebook has reached 46 percent, compared with only 25 percent in 2010, while 49 percent of parents feel their kids do not spend enough time reading books for fun, an increase from only 36 percent in 2010. Overall, 72 percent of parents show an interest in having their kids read ebooks, the survey found.

The findings reveal the potential for ebooks to motivate boys, who are more commonly known to be reluctant readers, to read more, Scholastic says, noting that one in four boys who has read an ebook says he is now reading more books for fun.

Ebooks may also be the key to transition moderately frequent readers (defined as kids who read one to four days a week) to frequent readers (those who read five to seven days a week), Scholastic says; according to the study, 57 percent of moderately frequent readers who have not read an ebook agree that they would read more if they had greater access to them.

Even so, the love of and consistent use of print books is evident, Scholastic says, with 58 percent of kids ages 9–17 saying they will always want to read books printed on paper even though there are ebooks available, a slight decline from 66 percent in 2010 This reveals “the digital shift in children’s reading that has begun,” Scholastic says.

The study also looked at the influences that impact kids’ reading frequency, and parents ranked extremely high, Scholastic says. According to the study, having a reading role-model parent or a large book collection at home has a greater impact on kids’ reading frequency than does household income. Plus, building reading into kids’ daily schedules and regularly bringing home books for children positively impacts kids’ reading frequency.

Scholastic also notes that the study shows kids prefer ebooks to print books when they do not want their friends to know what they are reading, and when they are out and about/traveling, but kids prefer print books for sharing with friends and reading at bedtime. Overall, kids are more likely to finish a book that they choose themselves, regardless of whether the format is digital or in print.

The study was conducted by Scholastic and managed by Harrison Group, a YouGov Company. Survey data were collected by GfK, and the source of the survey sample of 1,074 pairs of children age 6-17 and their parents was GfK’s nationally representative KnowledgePanel®.

Launched in October 2012, StarWalk Kids currently offers 150 gorgeously designed pre-K through grade 8 ebooks from about 60 authors in its growing collection, which is expected to swell to 400 titles by the end of the 2012–2013 school year, according to Liz Nealon, cofounder of the product’s parent StarWalk Kids Media.

Tightly curated for exceptional quality, the collection is about 60 percent highly illustrated nonfiction, and all titles are simultaneous-access licensed, making a subscription to StarWalk Kids a solid way to support Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for reading and writing. Each title includes vetted links to author and illustrator information, plus a “Teaching Links” PDF that lists the related CC standards, with ideas for extending learning through supplemental classroom activities.

StarWalk ebooks are basically device agnostic and can be enjoyed using virtually any device with a Flash-enabled Web browser to display the excellent, proprietary StarWalk Reader. IPad users will also soon be able to stream StarWalk Kids titles via an HTML 5-based app currently awaiting Apple approval. Users can have titles read to them by professional narrators, with or without text highlighting, or they can read selections themselves.

Teachers will appreciate the simple yet robust toolkit built into the StarWalk Reader, which includes the ability to highlight, add notes, zoom in or out, and jump to a page by either entering a page number or mousing over the bottom of the screen to reveal page thumbnails and selecting any of them. Educators and parents can also use StarWalk’s advanced search feature to browse the collection by Lexile level, alphabetic reading level, CC standards, and other criteria.

Whether its ebook titles were initially published in print or are digital originals, StarWalk Kids is meticulous about design and offers only fixed-format ebooks to preserve their visual integrity. While they’re perfect for viewing on interactive whiteboards, computers, and full-size tablets, the obvious trade-off for that visual consistency is that StarWalk Kids titles aren’t as easily viewed on smaller devices like smartphones as reflowable text ebooks would be.

It’s also worth noting that non-subscribers can buy many StarWalk Kids titles à la carte to enjoy on Kindle Fire and Nook tablet models.

For more information about StarWalk Kids and to sign up for a free trial, visit www.StarWalkKids.com.

In the tablet market, the push to unseat the iPad had competitors slapping an HD tag on every supersize device they produced, while Apple went small, releasing its seven-inch iPad Mini in October.

Nothing small about ebook prices for libraries, with Random House tripling prices for that market, with $28 titles ratcheted to $84, and Hachette doubling prices on their backlisted titles. Amazon finally devised a school model—but using it as intended violates their terms of service.

So what’s in store for 2013? I see three key areas: changing ebook business models, access to more content, and affordable new hardware. The first two points are strongly linked. By exploring new business models, we could access collections of resources, which have been previously unavailable to schools. To make this work, we have to find ways to overcome the roadblocks to ebook lending experienced by public libraries.

School libraries, I believe, will be the coming focal point for ebook licensing. We have strong relationships with our K–12 publishing partners, but now we must reach out to the trade houses. As the print market weakens, the time is right for schools to present a new business proposal.

The fact is, the big trade houses aren’t very keen on “selling” ebooks to libraries. To justify its $84 ebooks, Random House implied that libraries owned the titles, but applied so many restrictions that ownership was effectively obviated by all the fine print.

So let’s give them another option. Rather than seeking to own ebooks, school libraries should instead seek more favorable deals in a short-term lease market. Support classroom instruction with two-month book rentals, or license titles for three-year terms to avoid locking the school into endless recycling of the same novels.

If publishers are concerned about the impact on consumer sales, we can point out that these ebooks are for instructional use and not pleasure reading. By writing licenses that restrict ebook use in classroom settings, we’re giving up some access but opening up a huge new world of content. Besides, we can always buy print books for independent reading.

Finally, 2013 should be an exciting year for hardware. By year’s end, I expect we’ll see sub-$100 tablets, not knock-off brands, but fully supported devices akin to the Kindle and Nook. We might also see color digital ink readers with better support for illustrated books. But the main hardware issue will be accessibility. Two high-profile lawsuits in 2012 established that schools and libraries purchasing ebook readers must buy accessible devices. Currently, none of the E-Ink based devices (Kindle Paperwhite or Nook Simple Touch, for example) are accessible, according to ADA definitions. Make sure your district considers accessibility if it’s planning to buy mobile computing and reading devices this year.

 Christopher Harris (infomancy@gmail.com) is coordinator of the school library system of the Genesee Valley (NY) Educational Partnership.

A young patron with an iPad at Darien (CT) Library. Photo courtesy of Gretchen Caserotti.

A recent storytime at the Watertown (MA) Free Public Library began, as usual, with a song, followed by a “stand up, sit down” exercise to help the kids settle in. Children read from Don and Audrey Wood’s iconic picture book The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear (Child’s Play, 1990). But then came a digital twist.

Emily Miranda, Watertown’s supervisor of children’s services, passed out 15 iPads. Parents and children huddled close and opened The Three Little Pigs (Nosy Crow), an interactive, musical app, which allows children to physically participate in the story. “The characters have these fantastic British accents,” says Miranda. “It’s really fun to watch the kids blowing their houses down. Their snot’s going everywhere and it’s great!”

Watertown’s experiment with “digital storytime” is part of a larger, nationwide shift toward using apps in children’s library programs for education, entertainment, and involving parents in the learning process. Miranda says that apps such as Mo Willems’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Run This App! (Disney) offer levels of complexity that work for different age groups. They’re also very useful, she says, for “new-to-English families who need to teach their children.”

At Darien (CT) Library, early literacy iPad kits—which include a tablet with preloaded apps and a media literacy kit—are available for checkout. Getting good apps into kids’ hands is the biggest problem for parents and developers alike, says Gretchen Caserotti, Darien’s assistant director for public services, and that’s where libraries could help.

Meanwhile, Kathy Kleckner, a children’s librarian for Dakota County (MN) Libraries, is skeptical. She says that relying on apps for storytelling dilutes the key ingredient in a child’s development: human interaction. Kleckner adds that the benefits—and possible risks—of using apps are not yet well known. “My main concern is the vulnerabilities as [children’s] brains develop,” she says, citing research conducted by Dimitri Christakis, a child development expert at Seattle Children’s Hospital, on the harmful cognitive effects of screen time for kids under five years old. There is also concern about the potential misuse of information collected by the apps, says Judy Nelson, a librarian in the Pierce County Library System in Tacoma, WA.

Dakota County and Pierce County haven’t yet integrated apps into their children’s library programs, partly due to lack of parent interest, Kleckner says. “Truthfully I’ve never been asked about an app—how to use one, what are the good ones. They ask me, ‘what are the good books?’”

But advocates and dissenters alike agreed that apps are here to stay. Nelson says her library will begin curating a list of reputable and age-appropriate apps by 2013. “Whether we like it or not, that genie’s out of the bottle, so we have to manage it effectively,” she says.

Meanwhile, Darien plans to mount iPads in different sections of the children’s library, with apps that correspond to each section. A real impetus here is the Common Core standards. “This notion of informational content will spur a lot more excitement about apps such as NatGeo,” says Caserotti.

At Watertown, which has received an IMLS Science Is Everywhere grant, “the iPads can be useful for a project in which children dissect owl pellets, says Miranda. “iPads can help with finding information. I don’t how many ounces of food an owl needs!”

Arriving on the scene together—and even worse, on the tails of declining budgets for schools and libraries nationwide—these two factors present a real challenge. Fortunately, we also have some real opportunities ahead thanks to collaborative, solutions-focused thinking at the Summit. The gathering brings together school librarians, publishers, aggregators, and vendors to talk about vital issues and, more importantly, to discover the answers to today’s big questions.

A key question relating to the perfect storm of collection development is, of course, funding. Where will the money for new CC resources come from? How will we pay for new digital resources? Likely not from a new pot of money. But that doesn’t mean we can’t access funding that’s “new” to the library.

One approach is to look for existing funds within your school and district that can be redirected so that your library can purchase CC resources for the classroom. Eric Fitzgerald, Capstone Publishing’s vice president of direct sales, encouraged Summit attendees to seek out this kind of “blended funding.”

Blended funding means asking the English department to kick in some classroom or textbook money to help support that new literary criticism resource. Blended funding means pointing out to the elementary school principal that many of the new interactive ebook series are replacing science and social studies textbooks… so maybe they should be partially funded by the textbook budget. Blended funding isn’t a foolproof solution, but it’s a solid tactic. One challenge: it requires that you market your expertise in resource selection and collection development so that your value is obvious to others.

You also must, as they say, have skin in the game. Before you go asking for additional funds from departmental, textbook, or classroom budgets, make sure you’re ready to talk about the percentage of the cost that will be covered by the library budget. It’s a lot easier to sell someone on splitting the cost than it is to ask them to pay for the whole shebang.

When crafting your appeal for blended funding support, the other key component to address is efficiency. Remember, the library budget isn’t “our” budget; rather we’re centrally managing funds to enable more efficient purchases of resources to support classroom teaching and learning. Given the widespread need for new CC-aligned resources, libraries can work with publishers and aggregators to deliver wider access to content by going digital. One of our most powerful arguments is that we can save our organizations money by sharing resources and purchasing in larger consortia to reduce costs and increase access. The science teachers in a district or region aren’t set up to leverage group purchasing, but librarians are.

From my perspective as a school administrator, this is the perfect solution to a perfect storm. Everyone is desperate for content; now it’s our time to step up and deliver. We have the infrastructure, business relationships, and great publishers and aggregators to work with us. We just need to apply blended funding to make it happen for everyone.

Christopher Harris (infomancy@gmail.com) is coordinator of the school library system of the Genesee Valley (NY) Educational Partnership.

By Joyce Kasman Valenza

Shift happens. It disrupts. Next year, it’s critical for our profession to see opportunities where others might see obstacles. We can scout. We can innovate. We can harness disruption and lead. Or, we can opt out and let others do it instead.

This year’s shifts situate librarians for creative leadership opportunities, to make sense of the resources and tools that bombard our schools, and our public library partners, like that proverbial fire hose. Who better to curate and flip—and to ensure that learners have the tools they need 24/7? Who better to point teachers and learners to new platforms for growth and difference making? Who better to recognize the growing number of informal opportunities for learning as well as assessments that realistically recognize performance and skill acquisition? Who better to show learners that their work can have meaning and that, whatever their age, they can begin to shape their worlds?

It’s exciting. Let’s examine some of the stickier trends and trends-to-be and see where our opportunities are.

1. OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES/USER-GENERATED CONTENT. High-quality, open educational resources (OER) are proliferating and many are worthy of K–12 discovery. Bloggers, tweeters, and citizen journalists offer new real-time primary source perspectives. Major universities continue to change the nature of knowledge distribution and redefine opportunities for lifelong learning with their sharing. Social scholarship flourishes. I know, I’ve gotten excited about this before, but it’s simply richer now—ignoring this trend by not considering this content as part of your collection would be a tragic waste.

Opportunity: Pick a platform and curate OER resources important to your community—perhaps for instance, Common Core resources and strategies, perhaps pointing to the amazing new wealth of primary sources, or free documentary films.

2. CURATION FOR DISCOVERABILITY. Our collections have too many entry points. Without serious curation efforts, those OER resources and the valuable, more traditional content we pay for will go undiscovered and unused. Our catalogs may no longer be adequate containers for the dynamic Web content, tools, instruction, ebooks, and media we need to share across vendors. Librarians need to step up and fuse together interfaces that make best stuff discoverable when and where learners and teachers need it.

Opportunity: It’s not just about curating adult-created content. Kids create work worthy of celebrating and archiving. How about leading a school- or community-wide electronic portfolio movement? (See Helen Barrett’s work at electronicportfolios.org.)

3. CREATIVE COMMONS. Students need to be aware of the Creative Commons (CC) movement, not merely as media consumers but as content creators. Kids can control how they’d like the text, art, music, and films that they produce to be reused or remixed. It’s up to us to ensure that our artists, filmmakers, and musicians consider applying CC licenses to their own works. This year, Creative Commons released a Choose a License wizard, clarifying that opportunity. All this glorious content inspires a variety of other trends.

4. MOOCS ARE BUSTING OUT. This may have been the year of the MOOC (massive open online course). The dramatic proof was a fall 2011 artificial intelligence course, which drew 160,000 students—followed by the launch of higher-ed courses on the Coursera platform, MIT’s MITx and Harvard’s edX. I participated in Google’s international Power Searching MOOC last summer. Many predict the MOOC movement will trickle down to K–12 schools. There’s no stopping older students from joining in.

Opportunity: Search for MOOC s and point teachers and learners to strong opportunities for informal learning.

And, it seems, where there’s a MOOC, there’s often a badge.

5. DIGITAL LEARNING BADGES. Perhaps in response to measures of achievement that don’t really measure, well, real achievement, digital badges recognize skills and accomplishments that get developed online. Badges nod to those other-talented students who don’t get recognized for their touchdowns or AP scores. Badges follow learners when they leave the K–12 system, and come encoded with metadata to explain their value. Learners/users can then collect and share badges, potentially marketing themselves for future career and learning opportunities.

Opportunity: Scout for badge opportunities that match and recognize your students’ independent learning passions.

6. FLIPPING. Flipping the classroom changes the place in which content is delivered. If a teacher assigns instruction—in the form of video, simulations, slidecasts, readings, and podcasts—as homework, then class time can become interactive. Flipping frees the class for face-to-face critical thinking, exploration, inquiry, discussion, collaboration, and problem solving. Flipping is a sweet spot for the talents of librarians, who can lead the professional development involved in curating high-quality resources and creating digital instruction. We need to flip our libraries too, and mobilize them for the many users who access their information largely on phones and tablets.

Opportunity: Support a favorite teacher by helping her flip the lecture she least enjoys teaching!

7. PORTABILITY. My dream is that every kid in America will have a library in his or her pocket or tucked in a sleeve. If your school is working toward BYOD (bring your own devices) or a one-to-one program, this has got to be on your radar—no excuses. We should be involved in selecting apps for learners, and we should be driving the reinterpretation of the library for the phone or tablet. It’s time for all of us not only to have virtual libraries, but to have mobile sites or apps.

Opportunity: Let your students help build your app or mobile site. Even younger students can help determine what resources they most need to have in their pockets 24/7.

8. COLLABORATION AND CONNECTION. Kids are comfortable in the cloud. Whether it’s working on a story, script, survey, or presentation, students and their teachers collaborate automatically. Google Apps illustrates how ridiculous it is that other tools require individual logins, won’t accept group participation, and won’t move with users across devices. Professionally, TL Cafe thrives, and this year the #tlchat hashtag went live.

Opportunity: Be the go-to resource for linking classrooms with other classrooms, authors, and experts. Lead in setting up learning events via Twitter, Skype, Google+ Hangouts, or Elluminate.

9. MAKERSPACES/LEARNING COMMONS.Inspired by the Digital Youth Project and Henry Jenkins’s work on participatory culture, many of us are recreating our physical spaces. This, of course, dovetails with our rethinking of the space required by print and the place creation plays as the end result of research or play. It seems to me a perfect storm. Libraries are evolving as makerspaces (aka hackerspaces or fablabs)—flexible, collaborative spaces that foster playful design and creation.

Opportunity: Dedicate an area of your existing space as a makerspace. Ask students to help you run making workshops for the faculty during lunches.

10. KID POWER. We witnessed the power and agency of children who used social media to have their say and command the world’s attention. Nine-year-old Caine, for example, built a cardboard arcade that inspired boys and girls around the world. Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl from Swat Valley, leveraged the media to advance education for girls. After Taliban gunmen shot and wounded Malala in October, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared November 10 as Malala Day, a global symbol of every girl’s right to an education.

With the support of mentors from the First Light organization, British school girls raised awareness of the underground practice of genital mutilation (FGM) in the U.K. with their compelling documentary, Silent Scream.

Opportunity: Share this story (and the ones above) of kids making a difference with your own kids. Use them as an inspiration for creating meaningful future projects.

11. BIG DATA. Possibly best known as the intelligence behind recommendation engines or the Human Genome project, Big Data was abuzz in 2012. Politicians exploited it. Examples include the Google Crisis Map; the One Million Tweet Map, which analyzes who’s tweeting what and where; and GapMinder (www.gapminder.org), which demonstrates global trends through data and promotes using statistics to develop a fact-based world view. Big data fosters problem solving in the form of computational thinking, a literacy that we librarians seldom explore.

Opportunity: Encourage your students and teachers to be data scientists. Examine large datasets and tell stories about them using infographics.

Over the past few months, the American Library Association (ALA) and its president, Maureen Sullivan, have taken a hard stance with major publishers on the issue of ebooks in libraries. ALA’s attention has been directed at the so-called “big six,” some of whom still refuse to sell ebooks to libraries. While there isn’t much call for a hardline approach with small, independent publishers of K–12 ebooks, there’s one issue I’d like to address.

Author Christopher Harris has created a PDF detailing the digital content pricing challenges faced by small, rural schools like the districts he serves in the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership in Western New York.

Under the building- or site-based pricing terms that many K–12 publishers use, the small, rural school districts that I serve are being overcharged for digital content. So these districts—with an average size of 1,100 students and less than half the budget of the average New York school district—are, in effect, subsidizing the state’s large, wealthy, suburban systems, which are purchasing the same content at the same cost per building.

We aren’t the only ones who are paying more than our fair share. According to the United States Census Bureau, about half of our nation’s school districts have fewer than 5,000 students; but our collective voice is small and our individual impact on the market is even smaller.

Publishers are being challenged as well. In the days before ebooks exploded onto the scene, publishers expected to sell lots of print books to lots of schools. Big schools and small ones, wealthy and poor, if they wanted the content, they bought the book. And it didn’t matter if the shelf the book sat on was faded plywood or gleaming mahogany; only one student at a time could read a print title. In the digital world, this has changed. Our publisher partners have been forward thinking enough to sell us content with unlimited, simultaneous access. This deserves a huge thank-you—and a second look at the economics of this model.

Digital content is being sold at the building level, but often without consideration for the size of that building. For example, my region has 22 small districts with a total of 54 schools. When content is priced by building, our region ends up being charged as much as neighboring systems with almost twice as many students, but a comparable number of buildings. We need a new way to look at pricing content that considers not buildings, but the student population therein.

One solution might be to consider the average school building size for each state. The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) publishes lists of average elementary and secondary school sizes that can easily be incorporated into a pricing formula. My region, for instance, has 27 elementary school buildings, but according to NCES, that’s equivalent to 19 elementary schools, according to the New York average. Under an average-school pricing model, we would be charged for 19 elementary schools when looking at a regional purchase.

In the print era, we probably would have bought 37 copies of a book, but they would have been limited to 37 users. With digital content, when the potential use is expanded to an entire school, it’s only fair that the population be considered in pricing. By using a formula based on average-school pricing, we can help ensure equity of access to schools and students in small, rural districts.

ClassDojo

When I decided to become a teacher, the first course I took was on classroom management. It involved all sorts of rubrics and checklists for documenting student behavior—certainly not the most fun aspect of the job, but a necessary one. The records that I learned to keep have come in handy over the years, especially for sharing with students’ parents when we meet to discuss their children’s work. Thankfully, taking attendance and other record keeping no longer require paper, nor do parents and students have to wait until conference time to review this information.

Web tools are a boon to classroom management and make this work more transparent and even fun.

ClassDojo is always a big hit whenever I introduce it to new teachers. The free app can be used for recording attendance and student behavior. Both kids and their parents receive access codes to sign into ClassDojo, which they can do at any time to view their records. Once added to your ClassDojo roster, each student receives an appealing cartoon avatar, which appears each time he or she signs into the tool.

To record behavior in ClassDojo, simply sign into your account and select the appropriate class roster. By default, ClassDojo gives you six positive and six negative behaviors to record. On the positive side are teamwork, helping others, participation, hard work, on task, and persistence. The negative behaviors include disruption, disrespect, no homework, off task, unprepared, and talking out of turn. You can also add custom behaviors for each class. To recognize a student for a particular behavior, select his or her name from the roster and then choose and assign an award.

When I first examined ClassDojo last winter, I thought it was a good fit for elementary school kids, given its cartoonish look. But I discovered that it was being used in middle and high school classrooms, too. High school teachers, it seems, are using ClassDojo to award points during classroom discussions, creating custom awards for students who demonstrate related skills, such as “uses evidence in argument.”

A new service (available by beta invitation only at press time), Class Badges, lets you create custom badges to award to students for completing assigned tasks and projects. The application is best used, I’ve found, on a weekly basis. Rather than bestow awards each day, you might, for example, distribute badges to students for participating in a week- or month-long series of discussions. I created a badge in my classroom to reward perfect attendance for a week and another to honor students for meeting research deadlines.

Class Realm is another new Web tool in beta, this one applying a gaming element to classroom management. When the service is fully launched, Class Realm will assign avatars to students, and only the teacher and the student will know whose avatar is whose. Class Realm can be used to track attendance and class participation, but teachers can also use it to devise “edventures,” which will award points to students for completing a progressive series of activities.

If you’re looking for a new way to encourage positive behavior in your classroom, while also increasing the transparency of reporting, give these Web tools a try.

1. Research Tools: Google Books Ngram Viewer 2.0

Utilizing the Google Books corpus of scanned books (more than 20 million at last count), the Ngram viewer reveals how a searched word or phrase has been used over hundreds of years. Originally designed for linguists and historians, this useful, fun tool appeals to a wide range of users.

2. Meet the Climate Change Denier who Became the Voice of Hurricane Sandy on Wikipedia

Chronicling how a Wikipedia contributor initially characterized the hurricane—with no mention of climate change—this article reveals some of the site’s potential pitfalls regarding accuracy and bias. Raises interesting discussion points, regardless of one’s view of Wikipedia or climate change. The updated Wikipedia entry reveals a more balanced perspective.

3. An EPUB Reader Overview

The GHacks blog offers a roundup of 10 tools to assist with reading and creating EPUB format ebooks and documents.

4. Motion Pictures: A Digital Collection of Historical Film Industry Materials from the AMPAS Library

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts (AMPAS)—the people behind the Oscar Academy Awards—have digitized thousands of historic items from its library, making them available through the Margaret Herrick Library Digital Collections, with more to come. Especially useful to media classes, but also relevant to history curricula.

5. New: A Massive Compilation of Facebook Facts and Statistics

If you want to wow your students and staff with your knowledge of Facebook, this vast compilation of facts and stats from the Website-Monitoring blog about the social media giant is a must.