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.”

A new app for the iPad and Android devices uses a highly visual format to provide a different search experience for the tablet user. More than just a pretty interface, Izik—which debuted last month as the top reference app in iTunes—is based on Blekko, the search engine that boasts higher quality results based on human curation.

Enter a search term and Izik surfaces a stack of results based on category. The query “Black History Month” provided a “Quick Answer” up top, followed by related images, recent news, and categories, in this case, “African American,” “Black History,” and “American History.”

Navigation is optimized for the tablet format. So cutting down on keystrokes, users can swipe horizontally to view more results within the categories or swipe vertically to reveal more categories related to your search topic. Pinch to expand a result and share it via Facebook or Twitter directly from the search page.

Gary Price, editor of INFOdocket, cited Blekko, along with Duck Duck Go, as a viable alternative to Google. (“Wary of Google? Try These Alternative Search Tools”)

What distinguishes Blekko is a search tool known as slashtags. This feature enables users to refine results and build curated collections of select Web pages and then search and share those resources with others. So create a collection of Web resources, then share the slashtag with students, suggests Price. “Now, the only sites they’ll be searching are the ones you’ve selected,” he writes.

For a deeper dive into slashtags, creating custom slashtags and even embedding them on your website, check out Blekko’s search tutorial.

“It’s the one thing we can all agree on,” an unconference attendee told this reporter.  Indeed, the concept of hands-on programming in libraries—school, academic, or public—appeals to the broad spectrum of information professionals, from techy geeks at one end to traditional handcrafters at the other.  After all, “we’ve been doing this in children’s programming for years,” she said.

Put to a vote among unconference participants, “Creative Spaces” won out as the topic of choice (beating by a wide margin digital relevancy, advocacy, and budgeting).

Attendees shared ideas, with an emphasis on low-cost, practical ways to implement “Maker” activities in the library.  Much of the conversation urged partnering with other organizations, including:

Then there are Maker Kits. MAKE magazine is starting with a beta group of libraries, retrofitting their commercially available MAKE kits for checkout by patrons, from grade school kids to adults. The kits include “Getting Started with Arduino,” “Squishy Circuits,” and “Spinbots.”

For teens, there’s Maker Camp, a six-week online summer experience with how-to instruction for completing 30 projects in 30 days. This year, Maker Camp runs from July 8 to August 16. To register and see the projects from the 2012 Camp, visit  the page “Maker Camp on Google +”

For information about MAKE’s library initiative, email library@makermedia.com.

]]> http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/01/k-12/libraries-share-ideas-on-maker-spaces/feed/ 0 http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/01/k-12/ces-2013-top-trends-for-schools-from-adaptive-ebooks-to-crowd-funded-technology-products-to-look-out-for/ http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/01/k-12/ces-2013-top-trends-for-schools-from-adaptive-ebooks-to-crowd-funded-technology-products-to-look-out-for/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 19:19:42 +0000 Jeff Hastings http://www.thedigitalshift.com/?p=14352

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.

Illustration by Mark Tuchman

That’s the first thing you do when you finish reading a book? Pass it along to a friend? Return it to the library? Place it on the unruly pile of titles that you charitably call your “office”?

Scores of dedicated readers log on to Goodreads and share their opinions with the world. Imagine Facebook and your public library having a baby (on second thought…) and you get the gist of the social network that millions have come to know, use, and depend on. You may not have heard much about Goodreads, and the public at large hardly knows it exists, but this site has a devoted following among book lovers. It’s a powerful and, occasionally, controversial way for readers to connect with one another, share their two cents’ worth, and decide which title to tackle next. It can also be a valuable professional tool to share with your students and colleagues.

Calling all teens, teachers, and librarians

Similar to Facebook, you must be 13 or older to sign up for Goodreads, which helps to explain why it’s a useful tool for recommending books to young adults. It’s also a great way to stay in touch during the summer, because students can see what their librarians or teachers are reading. And since kids can write reviews for the site, it also offers them opportunities to offer an in-depth analysis of the titles they’ve read.

For those of us who work in school libraries, there’s the added benefit of being on the cutting edge of kids’ book publishing. I’m constantly finding out about new titles—such as Kelly DiPuccio and Heather Ross’s Crafty Chloe (S & S/Atheneum, 2012), Steve Jenkins’s The Beetle Book (Houghton, 2012), and Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles’s Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling (Laurence King, 2012)—which inform my collection-development decisions and help me make savvier reader’s advisory choices. I can see librarians going wild with Goodreads’ bookshelf concept (more on that later)—creating virtual shelves for their favorite read-alouds and subjects, and those oft-requested topics (princess books, anyone?). Every year, I lead an after-school, professional development session on the year’s best books. With Goodreads, it’s easy to pull up my favorite titles to share with our teachers. And even if you don’t want to create your own interest-specific shelves, you can still benefit from looking at your friends’ shelves. OK, are you ready to take the plunge and join Goodreads?

Dig Goodreads?

Then you might also enjoy the following sites for book lovers:

Shelfari 

The look of this Amazon-owned operation is very visual with book covers galore. You can import your Amazon purchases and contribute to the wikilike “Book Facts” for each title. This information is available on the site as well as on Kindle devices and apps.

Library Thing 

This site (tagline: “Catalog Your Books Online”) is a utilitarian alternative to Goodreads. There are fewer frills, and the look isn’t as slick as Goodreads, but there’s also no advertising staring you in the face. The basics are all there: reviews, collections, groups, and discussions.

BiblioNasium 

Billed as “part kids’ social network, part parent’s guide, part teacher’s tool,” BiblioNasium is geared toward the education market, and it’s very kid friendly. Teachers can join, generate class accounts, and create a reading network with their students, who can respond to books and post their own reviews.

A few basics

I joined Goodreads in 2008, about a year after it was launched, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that many of the librarians and bloggers that I follow were using the service. It’s secretly popular, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. In December 2011, BuiltWith, a technology information provider that tracks working websites, reported that Goodreads had “6,700,000 members who have added more than 230,000,000 books to their shelves.” And in August 2012, the Los Angeles-based company announced that over 10 million users had recommended more than 300 million books on its site.

My home bookshelves may be a mess, but on Goodreads, they’re immaculate. Many people, myself included, use the site as a de facto home library. By adding titles to various virtual “bookshelves,” Goodreads encourages its users to organize their reading and to reflect on what they’ve read. Members can assign a one- to five-star rating to each title they’ve completed, and their individual appraisals contribute to a book’s overall rating, which appears next to the title.

Inside and out

When you register for Goodreads, you have the option of letting the service check your email or social media accounts for any members you may know. Once you have a few friends, things get interesting.

If you have a Facebook account, you’ll feel comfortable—even peaceful—with Goodreads’ design and layout, because the site keeps clutter to a minimum. Its home screen lists “Recent Updates”—the equivalent of Facebook’s well-known wall of “Status Updates”—that indicate when friends have added a new book to their to-read piles, rated a book, or written a review. Overachievers, ahem, frequent users can even offer updates on the number of pages they’ve read in their most recent book.

If you’re new to Goodreads, one of the first things you’ll notice is that it has a few built-in shelves—“read,” “currently reading,” and “to-read”—for you to put your books on, but you can also create your own custom shelves. I have one for “Books Read in 2012” and a “to-review” shelf for some 2013 titles that I’m planning to critique, including Steve Jenkins and Robin Page’s My First Day (Houghton), Cecil Castellucci and Sara Varon’s Odd Duck (First Second), and John Coy and Joe Morse’s Hoop Genius (Carolrhoda).

From the home screen, you can easily set up a “Reading Challenge.” Simply enter the number of books you’d like to read this year, and Goodreads will track your progress. There are also plenty of social features. The site lets you compare books with friends, comment on reviews, and recommend books to friends. Members can also set up lists for others to vote on. I especially like checking out the Newbery and Caldecott lists, because they highlight titles that are getting good reviews and may be in the running for these prestigious children’s literature awards.

You’ll also find groups for every imaginable genre and niche—from manga to literary fiction to werewolves—which offer a place for those with shared interests to get together to discuss what they’re reading. You can also start a book club or create a digital counterpart to a club that already exists in the offline world. I belong to a mock Newbery group that has more than 800 members, and we always have lively discussions.

If sharing on the site isn’t enough, you can also create a widget that displays your books on your website or blog. It looks like a little bookshelf and flashes through the titles on any of your Goodreads shelves.

The organization benefits alone are worth the price of admission. Actually, since the price of admission is free, the benefits are worth way more. I love being able to quickly look back at my reading history. Plus, the ability to add filters—narrowing my search results according to the number of stars a title has—means it takes only seconds to pull up a list of my “five star” favorites.

Goodreads is also a helpful place to find basic book information. Summaries, pub dates, cover images, and genre details are available for any book you can think of. Underneath this information, you’ll find reviews from Goodreads users. Friends’ reviews always appear at the top, followed by other users’ opinions.

Goodreads’ free mobile app is another good reason to jump onboard. It’s well thought out, with intuitive touches that allow easy access to just about everything you can access on the regular site. It even lets smartphone and tablet users scan books’ barcodes—entering them into their “to-read” shelves without having to type a single thing. I knew I got a smartphone for a reason.

Controversy!

Any time “non-critics” are able to share their opinions worldwide, there’s bound to be some friction. While this sort of “review by committee” approach is something that rightfully makes many cringe, it invariably holds some power, and most likely guides many readers’ book choices. The “yea or nay” type of reviews that Goodreads allows (it should be noted that the site also offers an opportunity for lengthy, thoughtful reviews) may not be ideal, but the Harvard Business School recently released a study that shows that, in general, Amazon’s reviews (which are very comparable to GoodReads’) are more similar to a professional critic’s opinion than one might think. I’m not giving up my professional reviews any time soon, but this study provides some food for thought. As you might expect, this is a controversial topic.

The public nature of online reviews clearly has pros and cons. In some cases, it has increased the tension between readers and authors. Writers who belong to Goodreads should be prepared to occasionally give their thin skin a workout. I’ve heard of authors (I won’t name names) who have joined the service only to cancel their accounts because of unfavorable (and, in many cases, unfair) reviews of their work. Stories of unhappy writers directly contacting users to contest their negative reviews are also out there. But there’s a flip side: being a member of Goodreads allows authors to directly interact with their fans in ways that were unimaginable until fairly recently. And for readers, the chance to easily contact a favorite author to praise their latest book is a genuine 21st-century thrill.

Still, controversy occasionally erupts, as in the case of British thriller writer Stephen Leather, who admitted that he’d created fake Goodreads accounts so he could write positive reviews of his own works. He also, every now and then, gave other authors’ books one-star reviews to lower their overall ranking. Although this sort of deviousness is rare, it offers a glimpse into the “book review 2.0” world.

It’s a wrap

Now that I’ve been a member of Goodreads for a few years, it’s hard to imagine going back to the days when my only bookshelf was an actual physical object. I like that my unorganized mess of hard copies has a neat and tidy online counterpart. The organizational, informational, and social elements of the service have won me over. It’s a personal and professional win. Chances are, it’ll enrich your reading and teaching life, too.

Travis Jonker is a school librarian and an SLJ blogger (100scopenotes.com). His last feature for the magazine, “Travis’s Excellent Adventure” (September 2012), was about how to launch a successful ereader program.

“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®.

His first children’s book, the Caldecott Honor Anansi the Spider (Holt, 1972), based upon his animated film, retold the traditional West African tale of the clever and mischievous trickster. In his Caldecott Medal-winning Arrow to the Sun (Viking, 1974), McDermott once more recast one of his animated films in picture book format. The book retold the Pueblo tale of a boy who journeys to the sun to seek his father.

McDermott received both a Caldecott Honor and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award for Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest, (Harcourt, 1993), a Native American tale of the birth of the sun which School Library Journal described as an “amusing and well-conceived picture book.”

In recent works such as Creation (Dutton, 2003), Pig-Boy: A Trickster Tale from Hawai’i (2009), and Monkey: A Trickster Tale from India (both Harcourt, 2011), McDermott turned to Aztec, Hawaiian, and Buddhist traditions to continue with his convention of bringing folklore to life.

In addition to his work as an author and illustrator, McDermott regularly shared his views on his craft with others through lectures and presentations. In 2001, he gave several talks in Japan, where his books have long been popular, and in 2003, he presented a discussion on picture book art at the Maui Writers Conference in Hawaii.

Born in 1941 in Detroit, McDermott displayed a passion for art early in life. At the age of four, he took classes at the Detroit Institute of Arts. McDermott went on to study at Cass Tech and then later at Pratt Institute in New York on scholarship. He then started a career as a filmmaker, producing short animated features on folklore, including “Anansi the Spider,” which garnered the American Film Festival Blue Ribbon in 1970.

“Gerald had an unusual talent for reaching both kids and adults; the six trickster tales he published with Harcourt certainly show his ability to reach across generations,” said Jeannette Larson, editorial director of Harcourt Children’s Books, who worked with McDermott. “His grasp of the cultural heritage behind his stories was impeccable, yet his books were never weighed down by his depth of knowledge. Every story is distilled to its essence; each one has a vein of humor that makes it accessible to even the youngest readers. And his artwork! Always stunning.”

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Jupiterimages, Brand X Pictures.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

JJ Echaniz, Yale freshman and CEO of Forward Tutoring

Like one or two other well-known tech wizards, Michael Dell began building his vision for an innovative computer company from a college dorm room, when he was a student at the University of Texas at Austin. Supporting that spirit of entrepreneurship among young people, Dell, Inc. is now awarding grants to student innovators whose projects aid education in and out of the classroom.

“Every company starts with a great idea,” says Michele Glaze, Strategic Giving and Employee Engagement Manager at Dell. “We believe that students have this wonderful voice when it comes to changing the world.”

With that in mind, Dell last month announced the winners of its Dell Education Challenge, an international competition recognizing projects that support learning issues among K-12 students. From the 400 project submissions, Dell employees selected one winner, awarded $10,000, along with three finalists who will be entered into the 2013 Dell Social Innovation Challenge, whose entrants compete for more than $350,000 in cash prizes and other awards. Seven additional Dell Education Challenge “Promising Projects” received $1,000 each.

The winning endeavor, Forward Tutoring, started in 2010 as the brainchild of seven teenagers at the Newman Smith High School in Carrollton, Texas. Through its online platform, Forward Tutoring allows students to earn credits by volunteering in their communities, and then applying those credits toward one-on-one online tutoring sessions with other qualified students. Those volunteer tutors can themselves earn scholarships and internships from supporting organizations.

“Students don’t like to volunteer if they’re not passionate about the issues they’re volunteering for,” says JJ Echaniz, one of Forward Tutoring’s founders who is now a freshman at Yale. But Echaniz said that a survey among north Texas schools showed that “given the right opportunity that matches a student’s interest, 96 percent of students said they would go out and volunteer.”

Echaniz and his classmates harnessed that volunteering potential to create “an ecosystem where students pay it forward,” he says, creating a win-win situation in which kids’ community efforts also help them academically.

The Forward Tutoring team also strived to make tutoring fun. “Other tutoring programs are very impersonal,” says Echaniz. With Forward Tutoring, “the idea is that you’re speaking with someone your age. The advantage is that if students can relate to the tutor, it’s so much easier to learn.” Becoming an FT tutor is actually competitive, Echaniz notes, since interested high schoolers who are academically gifted still must pass a qualification process. Echaniz adds that the organization is creating college chapters, including ones at Yale, The UT Austin, and the University of California at Berkeley, schools that other Forward Tutoring founders are attending.

The Dell Education Challenge second-place winner is the Gyan Knowledge Lab, an organization that sets up hands-on learning labs for students in India, with the goal of keeping kids engaged in education—and in school.

“There’s not a lot of hands-on learning in India,” says Glaze. Without that, it can be hard for students to stay academically stimulated and many drop out. “In the U. S., you’re going to get out the beakers during science class, but that doesn’t necessarily happen in India,” she explains. “This project focuses on constructive learning.”

Another finalist is e-Education for Gaza, which provides support for children with learning difficulties in Gaza by providing videos with which teachers can connect with educational experts in their field.  The third finalist, Next Step Leaders, is a leadership development training program for educators that provides personalizes assessments, group leadership training, and one-on-one coaching.

According to the company, the Dell Education Challenge expands the Dell Social Innovation Challenge, the world’s largest platform to support student innovators. It is managed by UT Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.