The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
How will schools pay for new CC resources, including digital? 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. But that requires that libraries market their expertise in resource selection and collection development so that your value is obvious to others, says Christopher Harris.
You can create infographics—visual representations of data—from scratch using free web tools. Library consultant and educator Linda W. Braun takes you step by step through making your own infographic using easel.ly and info.gram.
“You’ve seen infographics, right? Those visual representations of information that seem to be popping up everywhere on the Internet?,” writes Travis Jonker. Here’s his effort using easelly.
Due to their longstanding frustration with Amazon’s failure to make Kindle ereaders accessible to people who are blind, officials from the National Federation of the Blind will be protesting outside Amazon’s Seattle headquarters on December 12.
App production has skyrocketed. But curiously, a number of children’s book publishers and app developers are now thinking twice about the format. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a slew of exceptional products this year, and you’ll find a number of them on our list.
From MOOCs to open educational resources, Joyce Valenza examines the top trends of the year in technology. There are unique opportunities for librarians here and Valenza outlines specific actionables in this online version of School Library Journal’s feature story.
A friend of mine recently forwarded me one of those emails. I’m sure you’re familiar with them: lots of cute photos, and when you scroll to the bottom, you typically see some kind of humorous statement. This particular email had several pictures, all of teenagers—at the park, in a restaurant or car, at a baseball game. And in every image, the teens wereahunched over, totally engrossed in their cell phones. The very last photo is of Albert Einstein, and it’s accompanied by a quote from him: “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
Though school librarians have often struggled with meeting the needs of students with disabilities, Project ENABLE is a new resource that will help them assist this underserved population.
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.
Former teacher and virtual event entrepreneur Jeremie Miller created the Teen Technology Project to marry his passion for technology, teens and social issues. After discovering his project through its Facebook page, I got in touch with Jeremie and asked him to tell me more about his hopes and aspirations for the project.
Mary Lee Schneider becomes president and chief executive officer of Follett Corporation. Schneider’s appointment has important implications for the elementary and high schools that rely on Follett for their print and digital learning materials.
The Global Education Conference, held around the clock November 12–16, offered a wide range of sessions by and for educators. In particular, “Appls Galore” emphasized a variety of ways to use this technology with young students.
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.
A report issued by The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop concluded that though children under 13 are involved in social media, there isn’t enough data on their social networking habits.
It’s no secret children love learning about animals, and picture books about them are some of the most popular titles in libraries. Three apps combining story and facts about animal life have recently been made available. “Touch and Go’s” reviewers took at look at them.
Buffy Hamilton, best known as the Unquiet Librarian, will soon be joining the Cleveland Public Library. Starting next year, Hamilton will become CPL’s Learning Specialist and will work to engage Cleveland’s patrons, from students to the greater public, through “library-supported communities of participatory learning.”
Though a recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that in general, digital research tools impact students’ work positively, the study also reported that teachers believe that access to technology is also making students much more easily distracted.
About 500 librarians gathered in St. Louis for YALSA’s Young Adult Literature Symposium to discuss social reading within Ereaders, apps such as Inkling, Kno, and Subtext, and which contemporary books teens will be reading in the 2057.
