Children’s book classics such as Green Eggs and Ham (1960) and The Cat and the Hat (1957) will be available in ebook format for the first time beginning on September 24, says publisher Random House Children’s. Written and illustrated by the beloved Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Geisel), 15 titles will make their digital debut on that date, and by November, a total of 41 ebooks will be available for children, parents, and educators. All the Seuss ebook titles will keep the original layouts and iconic illustrations from their print editions.

“The introduction of ebook editions to the Dr. Seuss canon is an exciting milestone that we know will enhance Dr. Seuss’s legacy,” says Susan Brandt, president of licensing & marketing for Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. “When Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat more than fifty years ago, he revolutionized the way children learn to read. Today, we celebrate that his impact on reading will thrive for generations to come with these new ebooks.”

Dr. Seuss’s books have sold more than 600 million print book copies worldwide.
The new digital versions also will be published simultaneously as Read & Listen editions that feature brand-new audio recordings of the full text. Perennial favorites such as Horton Hears a Who! (1954); Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (1990); and The Lorax (1971) continue to top the bestseller lists decades after their original publication. Every year, people across the country celebrate Dr. Seuss Day on the author’s birthday, March 2. This year marked the 75th anniversary of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938), his second published children’s book, as well as the 50th anniversary of Dr. Seuss’s ABC (1963, all Random).

See also:
E-Seuss: The Cat in the Hat and Other Dr. Seuss Titles Go Digital, Coming Very Soon as Ebooks

Follett

“We implemented the process for removing the older Follett Digital Reader and TextFlow Reader apps and activating the new Follett Enlight app,” says Britten Follett, the company’s communications manager. “Currently the Follett Enlight app is appearing in GooglePlay, however we are waiting on the Apple Store to refresh in order for the Follett Enlight app to appear [there].”

Although some school librarians had expressed dismay this week—on Twitter and elsewhere on social media—after encountering problems accessing the new app, Follett confirms that the app is live on both online stores. Those having trouble locating it on iTunes, she notes, can use this direct link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/follett-enlight-k-12-edition/id692783324?mt=8

Enlight is designed to provide schools with universal access to “quality K–12 econtent in a consistent virtual learning space that promotes critical thinking skills through reading, studying, and note taking,” the company says. Enlight also allows students to add notes and highlights to ebooks, and gives students access to chosen dictionaries based on reading levels.  Beyond Enlight, the new release of FollettShelf includes two new modules designed to connect econtent to all parts of a school district:  FollettShelf Classroom Connections, and FollettShelf District Manager.

“On the heels of new partnerships with Random House and Hachette Book Group, this latest release…gives schools access to thousands of popular ebook titles for K–12 students in a classroom-ready reading environment,” adds Tom Schenck, Follett School Solutions’ president, COO.

Ebook providers offer different selections of titles with varying terms. Which ones will best meet your school’s needs and budget? School Library Journal’s snapshot of 19 ebook vendors outlines the suppliers’ range of offerings, terms of use, and pricing options.

Do you want to buy your ebooks outright, or lease them? What kinds of discounts are available? Can students download e-content onto their personal devices or read offline?

This guide is intended to help librarians choose the vendors that are right for their schools. [This guide was updated on September 6 to correct an error in the entry for Rosen Publishing, and again on September 9 to add an entry from EBSCO.]

]]> http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/09/ebooks/e-its-complicated-how-two-schools-are-riding-the-transition-to-ebooks/feed/ 0 http://www.slj.com/2013/08/industry-news/capstones-interactive-super-ebooks-gamers-wanted-for-the-innovation-math-challenge-news-bites/ http://www.slj.com/2013/08/industry-news/capstones-interactive-super-ebooks-gamers-wanted-for-the-innovation-math-challenge-news-bites/#comments Thu, 22 Aug 2013 13:15:08 +0000 Phyllis Levy Mandell http://www.slj.com/?p=57099  

Interactive Comics

Thirty-two titles from the “DC Super-Pets,” “DC Super Heroes: The Man of Steel,” “Superman,” and “Batman” series are now available as interactive ebooks from Capstone. An additional 28 titles will be released in the fall. There’s a one-time fee for “DC Super-Pets” interactive ebooks ($31.99 ea.) and “DC Super Heroes” ($33.99 ea.), which grants access to unlimited circulation for all students 24/7 in school, at home, or on any mobile device. “Our DC Comics brand of full-color chapter books offers readers the perfect introduction to DC Comics characters and are among Capstone’s most successful and best-selling series,” noted Matt Keller, Capstone’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Librarians can expand their digital collection with the titles kids love without having to worry about hidden fees or circulation limits.”

Math Challenge

WGBH Educational Foundation’s Innovation Math Challenge is for anyone who wants to create fun and engaging math educational media—educators, student teams, gamers, or programmers. Applicants can submit entries of games, math videos, infographics, or manipulatives. The contest challenges individuals or teams to design and create a web-based digital resource between two and six minutes in length related to middle school math and connected to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. The entry should be “engaging, rich in content and context, and go beyond strictly procedural teaching.” The deadline for submission is November 22. Check out the website for more information and contest rules. Up to 100 winners will each receive $1,000.

“The inclusion of HBG’s titles adds a significant boost to the quality and quantity of titles MackinVIA serves,” says Randal Heise, Mackin’s president and co-owner. “With more and more publishers of HBG’s caliber coming on board, we have become the clear choice in a school’s decision on where they acquire their digital and printed content.”

Mackin’s proprietary digital resource management system, MackinVIA, aims to provide students and educators with simple and convenient access to the entire collection of eBooks, databases, audio books and video content a school has acquired.

All of the eBooks and digital content within the MackinVIA platform can be accessed through a variety of exclusive apps made for all devices including the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phones and tablets, Nook, Kindle, and Mac and PC desktop computers.

From Follet:

Follett today announced a partnership with U.S. trade publisher Hachette Book Group (HBG) to provide preK-12 school libraries and students expanded access to popular children’s titles in an ebook lending format for the 2013-2014 school year.

Ebook offerings published under HBG’s Little, Brown Books for Young Readers imprint include noteworthy books such as the Ninth Ward (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Award) and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner).  “Our goal is to have authors’ work available to schools and students as technologies and reading habits evolve, and this partnership with Follett helps us in this effort,” said Evan Schnittman, HBG’s EVP, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer.

Read the Complete Announcement

The report, “The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing Is Taught in Schools” find that 78 percent of the 2,462 advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project say digital tools such as the Internet, social media, and cell phones “encourage student creativity and personal expression.”  In addition, 96 percent say digital technologies “allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience” and 79 percent agree that these tools “encourage greater collaboration among students.”

According to teachers, students’ exposure to a broader audience for their work and more feedback from peers encourages greater student investment in what they write and in the writing process as a whole.

“These results challenge in many ways the notion that students’ writing skills are being undermined by their increasing engagement with digital tools and platforms,” says Kristen Purcell, associate director for research at the Pew Internet Project. “Teachers do have concerns that digital tools are blurring the lines between formal and informal writing and see writing skills that need improvement, but they also see the benefit of students having more people respond to their writing and the increased opportunities for expression these digital tools offer.”

Half of these surveyed teachers say digital tools make it easier to teach writing, with just 18 percent saying digital tools make the process more difficult.  In particular, teachers value interactive platforms, which allow them to work alongside a student on a piece of writing and allow students to edit and view each other’s work. Among this group of teachers:

The “creep” of informal grammar and style into “formal” writing, as well as students’ impatience with the writing process and their difficulty navigating the complex issues of plagiarism, citation and fair use, are still a concern. Specifically:

Reflecting these latter concerns, a majority of these teachers spend class time “discussing with students the concepts of citation and plagiarism” (88 percent) and  “discussing with students the concepts of fair use and copyright” (75 percent).

Interestingly, while the survey includes teachers of all subjects, English/language arts teachers in the sample consistently express more positive views of the impact of digital tools on student writing and the potential of these tools to help them teach writing. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of English/language arts teachers surveyed say digital tools make teaching writing easier, compared with 32 percent of math teachers, 38 percent of science teachers, and 45 percent of history/social studies teachers.

English teachers are the most likely to use collaborative online platforms with their students, and are more likely than teachers of other subjects to say digital tools increase the likelihood students will revise and edit their work. They are the least likely of all teachers to say digital tools make students careless in their writing or undermine grammatical and spelling skills.

“Teachers, writing teachers especially, do not view good writing and the use of digital tools as being at war with each other,” adds Judy Buchanan, deputy director of the National Writing Project and a co-author of the report. “When educators have opportunities to integrate new technologies into teaching and learning, they are the most optimistic about the impact of digital tools on student writing and their value in teaching the art of writing. They gave countless examples of the creative ways they use emerging digital tools to impart writing skills to today’s students.”

These findings emerge from an online survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in collaboration with the College Board and the National Writing Project. It is a non-probability sample of 2,462 middle and high school teachers currently teaching in the U.S. and its territories, conducted between March 7 and April 23, 2012. Some 1,750 of the teachers are drawn from a sample of advanced placement (AP) high school teachers, while the remaining 712 are from a sample of National Writing Project teachers.

The site—which is a collaboration with Mackin Educational Resources and School Library Journal—aims to provides a comprehensive “summer reading style” program where registered school librarians will read and review books. The site will remain open to all visitors to help even more schools and libraries with book selection using a wishlist feature. Here Be Fiction will also allow librarians to access books for free during future school vacation times.

The site was built by GVEP’s school library system to help bring affordable ebooks to the 22 small, rural districts and 23,000 students of the Genesee Valley region of western New York. Christopher Harris, coordinator of the system, initially developed the idea to help member librarians explore fiction ebooks to add to an existing digital library of reference and informational books.

“Our libraries may be rural,” Harris notes, “but by working together the incredible school librarians of the Genesee Valley are providing a wealth of digital resources to their students. As the librarians continued to ask for fiction, we needed to find a way to discover ebooks with terms that could work for us.”

The books are being delivered using the secure MackinVIA platform. Readers can access the books in Here Be Fiction online or by using one of the free iOS or Android phone/tablet MackinVIA apps. School Library Journal is supporting the project with editorial content on best practices for using ebooks in classrooms and school libraries.

Participating publishers have agreed to license these ebooks with terms supporting classroom and school library use. The terms include a discount for multiple reader purchases to support class novels or book clubs, allowing offline access to the books to support home use in areas with limited broadband, and enabling text-to-speech reading of the book when possible to support readers with special needs.

“These are established, well-respected publishers who we have worked with for years,” says Kitty Heise, co-owner of Mackin Educational Resources. “It is wonderful to see the publishers enthusiastically support Here be Fiction, and we are excited about the opportunity to give these great fiction ebooks the attention they deserve.”

Anyone who visits www.StarWalkKids.com/popup can immediately read any ebook in the collection, which is about 60 percent highly illustrated nonfiction.

“We celebrated our first year of existence at the American Library Association national conference in Chicago,” says StarWalk founder and author Seymour Simon. “We all felt that it was time to give back. Opening our streaming collection for everyone to sample and share with kids via summer reading programs felt like the right way to say ‘thanks’ for a great year.”

Liz Nealon, StarWalk Kids Media’s publisher, says that the company hopes educators, administrators and librarians will also take this opportunity to sample the library prior to the start of the new school year. “More schools and libraries are acquiring the latest educational technologies, supported by broadband Internet connectivity,” she says. “But…the hardware is only as relevant as the software available to use with it. There has been a severe shortage of quality literature, both fiction and nonfiction, that is available and affordable in digital form. We formed StarWalk Kids Media to fill that void.”

Open access to all eBooks in the StarWalk Kids collection will continue throughout the month of July.

A few months ago, Marie D’Onofrio, one of the school librarians I work with, told me she was going to buy some fiction ebooks. D’Onofrio, who works at Livonia (NY) High School, purchased four ebooks from Lerner’s Carolrhoda imprint. She wasn’t familiar with the titles, but took a chance anyway.

The students loved the books. That wasn’t surprising, since Carolrhoda has been producing award-winning books for more than 30 years. Still, for D’Onofrio, as for so many other school librarians, exploring fiction ebooks was a voyage into the unknown.

Why? Because the status of digital fiction in school libraries is still relatively undefined, compared with nonfiction, whose traction in schools is pretty established by now. Public libraries’ evolution toward incorporating fiction ebooks has received a lot of attention, but schools are still catching up.

Right now, K–12 offerings in fiction ebooks are largely restricted to titles from the big trade publishers offered on services such as OverDrive or packages of pre-selected titles like TumbleBooks. Our knowledge of authors and ebook titles from other fiction publishers is still foggy.

This summer, the haze will lift with the introduction of a new program called “Here Be Fiction” (HereBeFiction.org). The endeavor is a collaboration between my system, the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership, Mackin, and School Library Journal.

This is how it works. School librarians who use Here Be Fiction will be able to identify quality ebooks available from a wide variety of publishers such as Lerner, Charlesbridge, August House, and more. Users can browse ebook previews and reviews posted at HereBeFiction.org, enabling them to discover fiction from established sources. The site also offers school library-friendly licensing terms, with titles readily available for licensing by school libraries for both individual and multi-user access.

During the project’s first active phase, from July 15 to September 15, selected school librarians around the country will have free access during their summer vacations to read and review ebook fiction from participating publishers, using the secure Mackin VIA platform. Looking ahead, Here Be Fiction will again allow teachers to sample books for free during future school vacation times—and active reading phases—in the winter and spring.

Throughout the year, the website will be available to everyone, with open access to lists of titles, short previews, and reviews, all of which will help librarians and teachers find and select new content. Here Be Fiction will also feature author biographies, publisher overviews, and editorial content focusing on ways to use ebooks in classrooms and school libraries.

Active site visitors will find it easy to highlight and share books they discover via Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. They will also be able to create wish lists of featured books that can then be downloaded or sent directly to Mackin for a price quote.

The need for a program like Here Be Fiction has become more urgent this past year, as school librarians have faced increasing pressure to deliver ebook fiction for both student-selected reading and teacher-directed class use.

To meet school librarians’ unique needs, participating publishers must agree to three requirements:

1) They must provide either multi-user or individual access plans, with a discount for licensing multiple simultaneous readers. This way, ebooks can be used for class novels, book clubs, reading groups, and other group purposes.

2) Publishers must make ebooks available for offline access through a secure platform like Mackin VIA or a download with appropriate security. This enables the participation of students and schools with limited WiFi access.

3) They must, when possible, enable the use of text-to-speech functionality through the reading platform to support struggling readers or those with special needs.

The site launches this summer in limited beta format. Access will be made available to additional school librarian reviewers as quickly as possible.

Aimed at kids ages three to eight, FreeTime Unlimited is an optional extension of Kindle FreeTime, a free feature available on any Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″. FreeTime enables parents to limit their children’s screen time and manage the content that kids can access.

Parents have already shared nine million titles with their children via FreeTime Unlimited, according to the release. The average parent provides his or her child with 18 titles, though some allow them more than 160.

Titles now being added include educational apps like Curious George at the Zoo, The Berenstain Bears and the Big Spelling Bee, Little Critter, and Triceratops Gets Lost from the Smithsonian Institution. There’s also educational content from BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr.as well as games such as Tetris, MONOPOLY Millionaire, The Game of LIFE, and LEGO Harry Potter years 1-4.

Exclusive Nick Jr, characters including Dora the Explorer, Go, Diego, Go! are also on offer.  Upcoming titles will include Where’s my Mickey? Monsters University, and more LEGO games such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter Years 5-7.

Parents can create up to six FreeTime Unlimited profiles that determine what kind of content will be made available to their individual children, and they can also choose content from their own collection. Advertisements and social media don’t show up on a child’s home screen, and “all of the content is already pre-screened for child appropriateness,” the press release says.

Amazon Prime members pay $2.99 monthly per child or $6.99 per family for FreeTime Unlimited. Non-Prime customers pay $4.99 per child or $9.99 per family monthly.

Over in the Jungle (Dawn Publications, $4.99; PreS-K), sung to the tune of the classic children’s counting song, is sure to become a favorite of the preschool crowd. In addition to the rainforest setting, this version features outstanding design, vibrant art by Jeanette Canyon, realistic sound effects, supplemental nonfiction text, and a challenging game.

Each page of the rhyming text introduces a jungle animal and a number of offspring from one to ten. Ocelots, honey bears, howler monkeys, leaf cutter ants, and other rainforest animals make an appearance, offering children an opportunity to learn about creatures they may not have encountered before. Taps, swipes, and jiggles to the screen trigger movements and/or additional sound effects.

Users can choose to read the story themselves, have it read to them, or listen to it sung. As the words are voiced, the text is highlighted. Those choosing to listen to the song will be treated to the catchy tune that retains the narration’s expressiveness. A touch to the arrow that appears on every page will allow children to hear the text (or song) repeated. At the end of the story, viewers are invited to find the 55 offspring depicted in the story populating one final, colorful jungle scene. An icon in the shape of a leaf brings users to a menu page from which they can access animal facts and photos; author, illustrator, and publisher information; and other apps by the developer.

Over in the Jungle is a feast for the senses. From the authentic background sounds to the deftly crafted polymer clay animals, each page is a delight. This app is perfect for sharing one-on-one or in a storyhour.—Cindy Wall, Southington Library, Southington, CT

Interior image from ‘Dream Songs Night Songs from Belgium to Brazil’ (The Secret Mountain) illus. by Sylvie Bourbonnière

There are three titles in the “Lullabies from Around the World, Read-Along, Sing-Along Collection,” but it is difficult to consent that any singular title is complete as an iBook. Each enhanced production—Dream Songs Night Songs from Belgium to Brazil, Dream Songs Night Songs from China to Senegal, Dream Songs Night Songs from Mali to Louisiana (The Secret Mountain/Association of Canadian Publishers, iBooks, $7.99 ea.; PreS-K)—offers a flavor of dreamy music and some strong illustrations, but the stories by Patrick Lacoursière lack any cohesive structure and there are almost no interactive features.

When open, each book has two options: read aloud and turn pages. Automatic page turning with the read-aloud mode is probably the best choice, otherwise viewers may think their device is broken. Each page offers one music clip, which ends abruptly. The clips carry no continuity between pages, and listeners are likely to be disappointed by the truncated tunes. The stories are weak, although the China to Senegal is the strongest of the three. Each page turn has one line of text, which possibly can be viewed as a dream-like phrase, but doesn’t work as storytelling.

For example, four consecutive pages in the Belgium to Brazil read: “Follow in the footsteps of an old woman,/Towards a young musician and his talking accordion,/Under a sky drawn by your friends, the stars,/Where your parents’ parents have already traveled.” Viewers never see the young musician again, and as soon as the accordion is heard, the music fades away. The page turns, and a new piece of music begins.

The books offer some appeal: the illustrations by Sylvie Bourbonnière are warm and rich, and there are two full songs (with lyrics) at the end of each book. An iTunes link allows listeners to purchase all the songs, which is probably the best investment for those interested in multicultural music.—Pamela Schembri, Newburgh Enlarged City Schools, Newburgh, NY

Illustration by Mark Tuchman

One option, championed by Jamie LaRue, director of Douglas County (CO) Libraries(DCL), is to pursue other sources of content. LaRue has struck deals with independent—meaning self-published—authors. DCL recently launched a deal to purchase titles from Smashwords, an aggregator and reseller of self-published content and so-called independent publishers, some of which offer hundreds of books on the site, while others publish just a couple titles. But the real problem is that most of the larger publishers and best-selling books on Smashwords deal in adult fiction—which is to say, erotica.

Even more troubling, in a recent interview by Publishers’ Weekly, LaRue was asked about DCL’s acquisition of children’s ebooks from Smashwords that were being made available with no review. “‘Can we vet every children’s book before we add it? I am not sure that we can,” LaRue responded, noting that he suspects DCL might “get stung once or twice.” This laissez faire approach simply will not cut it in school libraries. Truly inappropriate books in schools result in lawsuits, not minor stings.

I understand LaRue’s frustration and his desire to work actively toward a solution. Yet the maxim of quality over quantity certainly applies here. Publishers serve a critical role in the information ecosystem and are especially important for school libraries.

Unlike public and academic libraries, which have whole departments dedicated to new title acquisition, school librarians largely work alone. Even if we don’t always realize it, we rely on publishers to help with book selection. It’s the publishers who bear the cost of paying people to read the thousands of manuscripts submitted each year. Publishers pay for someone to then work with the selected authors to ensure that the books are accurate, grammatical, and appropriate in content and reading level for the intended audience. We’re left with the relatively easy task of having to select from the small percentage of books that make it through the established publishing houses each year. Our biggest challenge is that there always seem to be more books that we want than we can afford.

Imagine for a second if, instead of just having to consider among a few thousand vetted and professionally produced books, you had to wade through exponentially more choices? There are about 20,000 children’s and young adult books listed on Smashwords, but are any of them worth your time? The highest reviewed children’s book, Storm and the Magic Saddle, has 12 5-star reviews. But on deeper examination, I found only 10 actual reviews (two are duplicates), and only one of those reviewers has assessed any other books. There are also two reviews with no rating that question the accuracy of the information about horsemanship in the book as well as the age-appropriateness of the writing.

It all seems so, well, unprofessional. Given the publishers, aggregators, and professional review sources like SLJ that we’ve come to rely on, I just can’t believe that self-publishing is ever going to be the next big thing for libraries. Not when there are so many other great books still waiting to be read from the expert and established publishers with whom we already work.

Hachette’s entire catalog of 5,000 ebooks will now be available through OverDrive, Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 platform, and the 3M Cloud Library, under a pricing and licensing model similar to the one employed by Random House. New titles will be made available to libraries immediately upon publication, and Hachette will charge libraries three times the retail hardcover price for new releases. One year after publication, the purchase price will drop to one and a half times the cost of retail, according Hachette’s announcement. These ebooks are then “owned” by the purchasing library. Licenses do not expire, and titles can be checked out an unlimited number of times under a one book/one user model.

“Our goal is to have authors’ work available on as many bookshelves and platforms as possible, and we’re looking forward to working with public libraries to serve their communities of readers as their reading habits evolve,” Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch said in the announcement.

The news first broke in a New York Times op-ed by NYPL President Tony Marx, who commented on improving relations between the Big Six publishers and libraries over the sale of ebooks.

“While HarperCollins…was the first to provide access, after the [economic] downturn, it limited the number of times each e-book could be lent, while Hachette decided to no longer sell new e-books to libraries, and Penguin, which had agreed to do so, said it might back out,” he wrote. “To their credit, the publishers have now each come around,” with Simon & Schuster and Macmillan also recently announcing pilot programs.

Yet while the situation is improving, “many issues still need to be sorted out,” Marx adds. Between the expiring licensing terms or loan caps or imposed by  HarperCollins, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, or the significantly higher-than-retail prices charged by Random House and Hachette, ebooks remain very expensive for libraries, during a period of rising demand and declining budgets.

Hachette’s announcement states that its library ebook pricing model will be reviewed annually, with input from stakeholders including the American Library Association (ALA). ALA President Maureen Sullivan today expressed hope that an ongoing dialog may lead to more favorable pricing for libraries in the future.

“We welcome Hachette Book Group’s assertion that they will continue to review their library pricing going forward,” Sullivan said in a statement to the press. “ALA and its members believe that there must be business models with lower price points for which publishers can still make a reasonable profit.”

“With open minds and open communications channels, I believe libraries, publishers and authors will continue to find solutions to bring more content and greater balance to the reading ecosystem.”

“If you think about math teachers, they’ve always been able to give assignments in which students are required to show their work. That makes it easy for them to check individual understanding, pretty much on a daily basis. English and humanities teachers who give extended reading assignments have never had that luxury. Instead, they’ve comparatively been flying blind, taking it on faith that most students have done the required reading, without knowing for sure, and moving along daily without solid evidence that kids are really ‘getting it.’”

That’s what Jason Singer, the CEO and founder of Gobstopper, told me was the central issue his product is designed to address: the challenge of ensuring that every student is meaningfully moving forward in a given reading assignment—and not just faking it. Gobstopper is an ereading application that also promotes ongoing feedback between teachers and kids. How does it do that? By giving teachers the ability to embed customized, Common-Core-based, formative assessments right into the etexts that they assign to their kids. Teachers can also insert scaffolded support in the form of annotations, Web links, or links to video-sharing sites. (Imagine the power a teacher would have if she posted videos that explained her own reactions to and interpretations of portions of a text.) Teachers can also add polls and quizzes, turning those assigned texts into ongoing class conversations and providing students, through Gobstopper’s reporting tools, with both qualitative feedback and quantitative snapshots about individual and group progress and comprehension.

Just by glancing at their Gobstopper dashboards, teachers can see what percentage of kids in a specific class did their homework, how much time they spent reading, and what percentage of questions in a given Common Core standard such as “determining author intent” or “understanding historical context” their students answered correctly. Not only does that option eliminate the immense amount of time a typical humanities teacher wastes in class just trying to get a basic feel for who has actually completed and understood their assigned reading, but it cuts down on manual grading and attendant paperwork as well. Teachers needn’t necessarily enhance the etexts they assign from scratch, either. Instead they can select from among what Gobstopper calls “curriculets,” adding layers of ready-made content and assessments based on the skills they want to cover, and then tweaking the items to taste. For more information or to sign up and try Gobstopper, visit the welcome page for SLJ readers.

Subtext, launched a year ago and currently available as a free iPad and Edmodo app, is another application that doubles as a collaborative reading platform that focuses on Common Core skills. Subtext’s ereader has all the features—including text-to-speech capability, full-text searching, font selection, and a built-in dictionary—that you’d expect from a modern ereader app. Plus, in the right-hand margins of assigned selections, you’ll find teacher and student comments, links, embedded YouTube videos, quizzes, and polls, all indicated by familiar Facebook-like avatars that transform the normally solitary act of assigned reading into a friendly, ongoing social exchange that encourages students to “talk to the text” and to talk to one another. At the end of each chapter of the novels I previewed, students were asked—in Facebook’s thumbs up/thumbs down fashion—to rate the section. They were also invited to add a comment or prediction, start or join a discussion thread, or blog about the chapter they’d just finished reading.

Subtext works with any native or converted EPUB document, integrates with Google Books and Feedbooks, and Web pages can also be imported. According to Heidi Perry, Subtext’s marketing VP, lots of instructors choose to share assigned texts—and all of the ongoing classroom sidebars—on their interactive whiteboards during class time, not exactly “flipping” the typical ELA classroom, but certainly turning it inside out in a way that exposes the collective metacognitive underpinnings of the reading experience. Teachers can set up classes in Subtext from scratch or students can log into Subtext using their existing school-provided Google or Edmodo accounts. Subtext is working on creating an Android app and Web reader for the 2013-2014 school year. To find out more or to download the free app, visit www.subtext.com.

Both Gobstopper and Subtext are currently free at their most basic levels and when used with public domain texts. Neither has set a pricing plan for premium service levels that they’ll be offering in the future. Both companies, though, plan to monetize, in part by sharing profits on ebook sales. Subtext already partners with Google Books to offer convenient in-app ebook purchases that can be seamlessly delivered to entire classes, and Gobstopper is looking to have publishers on board by next fall.

Subtext and Gobstopper excite the English teacher and school librarian in me, opening up lots of new possibilities for collaboration and curation. And both applications completely blow the tired old book report options out of the water and instead encourage reading, analysis, and writing on a formative, rather than a summative, basis.

Plus, I can totally imagine using either app to remotely administer a summer reading program… preferably as I relax on a private island somewhere in the tropics. Sound good?

Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe. Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen. Visual design by Anthony Webster. Collins/BBC/the OTHER media. 2012. iOS, requires 5.0 or later. Version 1.21. $5.99.

Gr 9 Up –Based on two popular BBC science series hosted by physicist Brian Cox, this app immerses viewers in the science behind our solar system and the universe. It contains content from both television series with video clips, animated images, and infographics, alongside an incredibly rich and deep text.

Opening instructions guide users on how to navigate the app’s text and image gallery. The content is organized under the two broad areas (space and the universe), and both of these sections contains a number of subheadings or chapters. Chapters begin with a video clip introduction by Cox. Discussions start small–for example, sub-atomic and atomic particles expands to conversations about galaxies and the universe. A search box linked to a detailed index will help viewers locate specific information.

Cox is a great guide and the two-and-a-half hours of film clips of him discussing a variety of topics bring viewers to new levels of understanding. For instance, in considering the more than 2000 objects that circle the Earth, the author demonstrates what this “congestion” looks like with a clip of the identified asteroids in motion, and later, onsite at the Barrington Crater in Arizona.

Also included are more than 50 high-resolution 3D images that illuminate phenomena such as black holes and nebulae. These, along with authors’ renderings, can be saved, tweeted, emailed, or posted to Facebook.

To describe the content as multi-layered hardly does justice to this production. It’s a course in itself, taught by an engaging instructor, who while imparting his vast knowledge instills his students with awe and wonder appropriate to these otherworldly topics and scenes.—Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal

Kids Discover Galaxies. 2013. Version 1.1. Free. Kids Discover Space. 2012. Version 2.0. $3.99. ea: Kids Discover. iOS, requires 4.3 or later.

Gr 5-8 –Kids Discover has produced a number of apps based on their magazine series. Two of the recent offerings include the exemplary Galaxies and Space. The first focuses on the Milky Way and beyond, while the second covers our solar system.

In both productions, the writing is clear and engaging and the apps do an excellent job of presenting information via text and interactive features. In addition to navigation guides and visual indices, and a combination of pop-up text and/or captions, notes on important figures, Q & A’s, and definitions, these productions include a range of easily accessed elements such as film clips, animations, narrated segments, and background sounds that beautifully illustrate and enhance the accompanying text. For example, the more interactive Galaxies includes a projection of the Milky Way that allows viewers to zero in on Earth’s location and view it from a variety of angles.

Along with some spectacular photography, the apps contain reproductions, artists’ renderings, and colorful cartoon drawings. The activities included at the end of the texts–a jigsaw puzzle, a connect-the-stars drawing feature, etc.–are more appropriate for a younger audience, but these represent only a small portion of the otherwise stellar content. Overall, these are visually stunning, informative introductions to their subjects.—Lindsay Cesari, Baldwinsville School District, NY

Continue reading…

When word came out that Amazon was pulling social network Goodreads into its acquisitional tractor beam, reaction seemed to fall into one of two categories—either Big Brother Bezos (as in Amazon CEO Jeff) has again sprouted horns and can’t wait to get his hands on your user data, or chill pal “Jeff B.” is throwing on his Ray-Bans, giving one of those L.L. Cool J kiss-two-fingers-then-make-a-peace-signs and is going to improve your reading life.

I’m somewhere in between.

While Goodreads runs ads, it isn’t directly selling the things it advertises. I like that. Amazon is definitely selling things, so there’s reason the acquisition is giving some pause and driving others to seek alternatives.

Additional uncertainty stems from the status of user reviews. Some are concerned that reviews they’ve written on Goodreads will end up on Amazon—a place they didn’t intend. I post reviews on both sites, so this possibility doesn’t bother me a whole lot—but might strike some as a mild form of theft.

A large motivation behind the deal is the prospect of bringing the Goodreads experience to the Kindle. I can foresee the Kindle talking to a user’s Goodreads account, updating the to-read shelf when a new book is purchased or borrowed, and marking it as read when finished. A couple quick taps would allow you see what friends are reading and recommending. As owner of both a Kindle and a Goodreads account, it will be interesting to see how they merge the two.

Libraries that lend Kindles will probably want to keep an eye out and stay on top of any new Goodreads integrations. It seems likely that other ereaders will follow suit, adding more social features.

For those interested in making a switch, there are other options. Unfortunately two of the most appealing are either completely (Shelfari) or partially (LibraryThing) owned by Amazon. It seems silly to jump ship to either of these.

One alternative is Riffle, which is more of a Facebook app than stand-alone website. But I feel like I’m bugging my Facebook friends when I fill their newsfeeds with the books I’m reading (granted, options allow you to share as much or as little as you’d like). After using the service, I realized I like keeping my reading social network separate. Riffle’s Pinterest-y interface has a nice look, but its features feel lightweight in comparison to Goodreads. It would make a good choice for a more casual reader.

Bookish is another option, with author and title information, original articles, and virtual shelves to keep track of reading. It’s much more of a recommendation engine than database. Enter books you’ve read and receive suggestions. The database is growing, but I found mixed results. It also has direct ties to publishers, which might make users seeking a bias-free zone a bit hesitant. It looks slick and functions smoothly though.

Booklikes is an interesting entry into the Goodreads alternative race. This site treats book reviews like blog posts. Sign up for the service and you get a blog to post about your reading in addition to star ratings, shelves, searching, and other familiar features.

Other options aren’t too promising: either confusing or in various states of abandonment. It quickly makes one realize that Goodreads is the best at what they do.

Getting down to basics with the Amazon/Goodreads deal, we have a company that sells books looking for a way to sell more books by improving how readers find new books. Goodreads, with its quickly-growing network of readers (myself included), was an attractive addition. Early signs indicate Goodreads won’t see a total change of mission, so I’m not clicking the “delete account” button yet. But, as with many other Goodreads users, it might not take much.