The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
Christopher Harris shares his thoughts on how rural 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.
Two School Library Journal articles took gold and silver prizes at the 2012 annual Eddie Awards, sponsored by FOLIO: magazine and recognizing editorial excellence in magazines and websites.
Web applications that make it easy to create records in appealing formats for sharing, selected by Richard Byrne, School Library Journal’s Cool Tools columnist.
Author Seymour Simon talks to kids via Skype. The renowned science writer turned Web entrepreneur has launched StarWalk Kids Seymour Simon is not your typical start-up hopeful. At 81, he’s already had a long and prolific career as an award-winning author of science books for children. But like the researchers and explorers that he’s written [...]
Meet the latest tech superheroes: school librarians. According to School Library Journal’s 2012 School Technology Survey, media specialists are leading the charge to bring new media, mobile devices, social apps, and web-based technologies into our nation’s classrooms.
Just days after word broke that a Penguin/Random House merger was a possibly, it’s nearly a done deal. The companies announced they’re creating a joint venture, pending regulatory approval.
Ereaders and iPads are becoming integral parts of the school library because they foster creativity and encourage flexibility in learning. But are students using this technology effectively? Panelists from SLJ’s session, “Tablets in the Classroom: New Strategies, New Solutions,” discussed how to ensure that students are relying on these devices to truly make the most of their educational experiences.
Amazon’s newest service, Whispercast, attempts to make Kindles more tempting to librarians by letting them control multiple Kindles from a single access account. However, many librarians have doubts, and there are remaining unanswered questions.
Pennsylvania’s cyber students now have a school library to call their own. Opening its virtual doors on September 4, the library serves the 10,500 K-12 children who attend the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School (PA Cyber). Students can check out ebooks, conduct research through free databases for school assignments, and get print materials snail-mailed to their home with a click of the button.
Searching for some great ways to get kids hooked on creating digital content? Attendees at the October 17 Digital Shift event got some great tips from Wes Fryer, Melissa Techman, Liz Castro and Erin Daly, all participants in a panel on “Makers in the Library.”
It’s a boon year for students of Shakespeare and thespians: from Sourcebooks, Inc. and Touch Press come interactive resources that will change the way readers experience the Bard’s works. Sourcebooks has just released three titles in its “Shakesperience” series that promise to “transport readers from the page to the stage”: “Othello,” “‘Romeo and Juliet,” and “Hamlet.” Each iBook provides the text of the play along with insight from actors on their roles, audio and visuals of celebrated performances, and much more. Extensive commentary and notes, and video recordings of famed actors performing each of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, are among the highlights of the stunning “Sonnets by William Shakespeare” from Touch Press.
OneVote 2012 is a student mock election held before the national presidential election. Launched by Channel One News, the program gives young people the opportunity to learn about the electoral process and the issues via interactive content as well as the chance to cast their vote for the next president of the United States from October 22–26. Prior to the election, Channel One News will offer news and other special segments to help teens make an informed decisions.
Starwalk Kids, a digital streaming service available by subscription, launched October 10 with a curated collection emphasizing nonfiction. “We think this is the future of digital media for schools because it’s device neutral and offers simultaneous access,” says StarWalk co-founder Liz Nealon.
Rosen Digital has introduced a free, interactive ebook platform that customers can populate, à la carte, with unlimited, simultaneous access licensed, nonfiction titles for $34.95 each or $209.70 for a set of six.Sixty titles are currently available and an additional 60 will be released in January 2013. The ebooks feature colorful designs, eye-popping photographs, plenty [...]
Carolyn Foote brought six iPads into her school library in a modest pilot program that evolved into a school-wide 1:1 rollout. Librarians are well-positioned to play a critical role, says Carl Hooker, director of instructional technology for Eanes ISD, “They are the conduit to the ed-tech department as well as being a ‘just in time’ trainer.”
The inspiration for SLJ’s September cover may be obvious, but it was a bit of a process—an adventure, if you will—to arrive at the finished product.
After considering the lineup of feature articles, as we do each month for the print edition, the editors selected the cover story: a first-person account of a school ereader program by Travis Jonker.
An elementary school librarian, Jonker has been documenting his foray into bringing digital readers to his students in a series of posts on [...]
Wikipedia users can now create ebooks using articles from the English edition of the crowd-sourced reference. Library consultant Linda Braun shows how it’s done.
While the vast majority of parents who own an iPad use it to read ebooks with their children, moms and dads like some aspects of the digital reading experience more than others, according to a new study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.
The post On Reading with Kids on the iPad, Mixed Feelings Persist Among Parents appeared first on The Digital Shift.
Pat Scales, chair of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee and SLJ columnist, regularly fields questions on banned library materials. But “this is the first I’ve encountered in which a book’s format has been censored,” she writes.
