Illustration by Regan Dunnick

In his video “Tumblr: The Musical,” Youtube celebrity Hank Green mocks how Tumblr aficionados get lost in a loop of scrolling, liking, and reblogging to the point of neglecting everything else in their lives, including sleep. The addictive Tumblr scroll has indeed become the preferred Internet rabbit hole, as Green, brother of the author John Green, hilariously shows.

Should libraries and librarians use Tumblr? Is it wise to wade into this alluring sea of wacky photos, pop-culture commentary, and gifs—snippets of moving images—in order to virtually chat about best book lists, library events, title recommendations, and our favorite quotes?

Yes, and here’s why. The key to a useful social network is to strategically use communication tools, understand each network’s reach, and guarantee ease of use for all involved. Tumblr can be a successful way to connect to new and diverse audiences, provided you understand who you’ll be attracting to your site and how to use Tumblr to your advantage.

Why Tumblr works

In my job as a teen librarian, I’ve been running social networks since 2006. As anyone using social media knows, it’s vital to meet your patrons where they are, rather than try to get them to visit a new, unknown site. My colleagues in the reference section maintain lively accounts representing the library as a whole on both Facebook and Twitter. But the Twitter account I maintained for my teens fell dormant, since none of them seemed to be using that platform. So I decided to concentrate my efforts on where I thought my teens were: Facebook.

In the past year, though, it became clear that my teens were no longer on Facebook—or if they were, they weren’t using it to connect with the library. During that time, I searched for ways to invigorate the teen section of our library’s website—to post more content daily and engage more readers. I sought a streamlined, visually exciting site. But the traditional blogging options were hampered by clunky interfaces and an outdated look; I knew that the posts weren’t reaching many patrons, let alone teens.

Enter Tumblr. I had been using a personal Tumblr account for a few months and found its mix of art, photos, gifs, quotes, and videos to be far more engaging than my library’s traditional text-dominated website. Hank Green was on to something.

Tumblr’s interface is easy to use, and each post looks professional the instant it uploads. There’s no need to know code, wrangle with images, or get complicated with fonts. The site can easily take the place of a traditional website or blog.

Depending on the theme you choose for your Tumblr, you can include static information—like phone numbers or hours of operation—in a sidebar, while keeping the main part of your page fresh and visually exciting with an ever-changing stream of posts. Updating is incredibly easy, and you can save drafts and schedule posts to appear at future dates and times—useful for event reminders and time-sensitive content.

As with Twitter, your goals while using Tumblr are to engage with your public and gather followers. The more you post, the more users will find you through your content, especially by searching your tags. As on Facebook, people can “like” your posts. They can also reblog them on their own Tumblrs—similar to retweeting on Twitter or sharing on Facebook. Liking and reblogging are how your Tumblr audience shows its appreciation and where they may add their own notes. While the flow of information is mostly one-way, you can track your followers as well as the number of times an individual post has been liked and reblogged to gauge your impact.

Most important for youth librarians, though, is that young people are active on Tumblr. When I checked with my teens, many said they were Tumblr users and were excited by the idea of connecting to the library this way. That’s why I made the leap to Tumblr for our teen site.

Eight tips for successful tumbling

If you’re considering starting a Tumblr, either as a supplement to your established Web presence or as a replacement for a blog, it’s important to think through your needs and those of your patrons before making the switch. Below, some pointers.

1. Think visually. The most popular Tumblr posts tend to be images, photos, or gifs. In the past, there was no easy way to quote a TV show, film, or video game without posting a video. But with Tumblr’s magic combination of gifs and blogging, media quotes are now everywhere. Take advantage of this. If you’re recommending books, don’t just post a list: Include images of all of the covers. Promoting an event? “Tumbl” your poster and a selection of photos.

2. Tag your posts. Tagging is incredibly important on Tumblr because searching tags is how users discover content and people to follow. Remember, though, that only the first five tags on any post are searchable, so choose your tags wisely. After those five, people use tags to add commentary to their posts in the same way that savvy Twitter users deploy hashtags as asides or jokes. So these additional tags can be humorous reading.

3. Be professional but playful. Be mindful of what you post. It should be in keeping with what you would highlight on any part of your library website. At the same time, be aware that your Tumblr should be fun to follow. Share favorite quotes; topical, pop culture images; and favorite artists.

4. And…be mindful of mature language. One of the truths of Tumblr is that there is no oversight regarding mature content or language. When you first sign up, your Tumblr will be automatically set in safe mode, meaning that you will not see any content deemed “not safe for work” (NSFW) on your dashboard. The Tumblr community counts on users to flag their own blogs and posts as NSFW in order to keep safe mode working properly. There’s definitely 18+ material out there, and you won’t necessarily be forewarned by tagging or a user’s customary posting habits. Many Tumblr names are variations on the appreciative phrase f**kyeah___ (example: “f**kyeahbooks”). While you may be inclined to like or reblog those items, you should consider the profanity in the source site before doing so.

5. Schedule your posts. It’s especially enjoyable to schedule themed posts, perhaps once a week, that highlight a particular topic or service. For example, the New York Public Library celebrates “Caturday” every week on their Tumblr by posting cat-related images and items from their collections. School Library Journal runs a regular feature, “Where I Work?” with photos, sharing a glimpse or two of authors’ writing spaces. Who doesn’t want to see where their favorite novels are created?

6. Check your sources. A lot of unsourced images gets passed around Tumblr, especially when it comes to art and photography. If you’re not certain of a work’s provenance, use Google’s image source search by clicking on the camera icon that allows you to search via an image URL and see if you can locate the source reliably. Artists and image makers will thank you, and you’ll set a strong example of giving creators credit for their work.

7. Remember, it’s (basically) one-way. Tumblr is not the place to gather comments, start discussions, or debate favorite books. People can send in questions, or “asks,” through the Tumblr interface. You can also pose a question and invite your followers to answer it. That’s about it for the platform’s capacity for discussion.

Tumblr is built to be used through its dashboard, the main control panel where you scroll through posts and investigate whatever keyword searches you like. On your dashboard, there’s no easy way to comment. You can reblog a post and add a comment, but replying gets increasingly cumbersome. Unless Tumblr revamps its question system, at this point you’ll be announcing or sharing information, but only occasionally responding to a question.

8. Make it easy and fun to maintain. Check in daily and take advantage of Tumblr’s tools. Use the J, K, and L keys to navigate your dashboard quickly. Hitting the L key “likes” a post, and typing shift+R (on a PC) reblogs that post instantly. Remember the current limits: You can send 10 “asks” an hour and “friend” up to 250 people per day. For more Tumblr tricks and tips, check out this helpful list over at the Daily Dot: http://ow.ly/nVTvc.

Checking in on my Tumblr account has become the most relaxing and enjoyable part of my daily routine, keeping me abreast of new books, targeted book lists, library news, and the grand world of art and images from various media. One of my teens recently proclaimed how much she enjoyed my Tumblr—a gratifying signal that I’m heading in the right direction. As long as that enjoyment continues, and my own messages are getting out, I’ll keep on tumbling.

A few of my favorite Tumblrs:

General Tumblrs 

Book Riot
LIFE
National Public Radio
The New York Times’s The Lively Morgue 
PBS’s This Day in History
WYNC’s Radiolab

Library Tumblrs

Public Library of Brookline (MA) Teen Services (my Tumblr)
Cape May County (NJ) Library Teen Zone
Grand Rapids (MI) Public Library Tumblr for Teens
Library Advocates
Library Journal
The Lifeguard Librarian
Librarian Wardrobe
New York Public Library
School Library Journal
Teenlandia: Lewis & Clark (Helena, MT) Library Teen Services Department

Tumblarians list from

The Lifeguard Librarian
Young Adults and Teens at Oak Lawn (IL) Public Library

Teen Lit Tumblrs

Public Library of Brookline teen title recommendations (mine again)
Diversity in YA
The YA Cover
YA! Flash
YA Highway

Teen Authors who Tumble

Cassandra Clare
John Green
Shannon Hale
Karen Healey
Malinda Lo
Maureen Johnson
Rainbow Rowell

Robin Brenner is the reference and teen librarian at the Public Library of Brookline (MA). She is also the editor-in-chief of the graphic novel review website No Flying No Tights and know all too well the allure of the late-night Tumblr scroll.

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.thedigitalshift.com/2013/09/k-12/a-minecraft-library-scores-big-a-virtual-version-of-the-mattituck-ny-branch-is-a-hit-with-young-patrons/ http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/09/k-12/a-minecraft-library-scores-big-a-virtual-version-of-the-mattituck-ny-branch-is-a-hit-with-young-patrons/#comments Tue, 03 Sep 2013 15:19:15 +0000 Lauren Barack http://www.thedigitalshift.com/?p=17616

“Nothing’s impossible in Minecraft,” says Elizabeth Grohoski. She would know. Grohoski recently spent three months using the online game to create a virtual replica of the Mattituck-Laurel Library in Mattituck, NY, complete with a model of the working piano in the library basement (http://ow.ly/nQwCN).

Why? Because Karen Letteriello, comanager of the parents’ and children’s department at Mattituck-Laurel, where Grohoski works as a technical processor, thought the virtual Minecraft library would help attract young patrons. It has.

The project started when Letteriello read a School Library Journal feature story by librarian Sarah Ludwig about a highly successful Minecraft library club at the Connecticut school where she worked. Letteriello wanted a similar program in her library and asked Grohoski, a gamer since the age of six, to create it.

An immensely popular game launched widely in 2011, Minecraft allows users to build in a 3-D virtual world with cubes similar to Legos—but without any of the proscriptive kits and manuals. There are few limits to what a user can create in Minecraft. It’s all about gamers using their imaginations.

After creating a beta version of the project, Letteriello launched the finished site on June 20. The reaction has been a “tornado,” she says, with children clamoring to sign up and play.

Letteriello and Grohoski’s vision of the game features an appealing library-centric scavenger hunt. Each room of the Minecraft library offers a clue inside treasure chests tucked into the virtual shelves. Clues provide students with a summary of the plot, title, author, and call letters—so children can locate the books inside the physical library.

There are other activities as well—a maze, mini-games in which children can locate objects like sheep wool in multiple colors, and eventually a racetrack, which Grohoski hopes to build. Children can play a few notes on the virtual piano or ride up and down the virtual elevator—just like the one inside the real branch. And for those looking to explore outside the building, Grohoski shifted existing Minecraft destinations closer to the virtual library. These include a desert temple, village, ravine, and stronghold.

Students with their own Minecraft accounts can log on from home, or they can play at the library free of charge. The library offers five laptops with video cards, which play the full version of the online game, plus six iPads loaded with Minecraft’s pocket edition.

Letteriello is planning future educational projects using Minecraft and other digital tools. One possibility: a virtual opportunity to explore Ancient Greece and Rome. Her goal is that students will find their library experience as seamless as exercising their curiosity.

“I want them to use [the library presence in Minecraft] the same as they would the actual library, take a book home and teleport into another world,” she says. “I want them to feel the gaming world is just another part of the library.”

Mattituck resident Pam Kaminsky’s 13-year-old son, Collin, is “obsessed” with the Minecraft library, she says. He and his 16-year-old brother, Owen, are also impressed with Grohoski’s expertise with the game. “[Collin] says, ‘The librarian is talking to me about my program? Wow,’” says Kaminsky. “It’s like he has a new connection with the librarians.”

“Now the kids walk in and ask if Elizabeth is here,” says Letteriello. “She has a cult following.”

Children sign up to play on Fridays, when they can interact with others in the virtual branch. “We have waiting lists that you can’t imagine,” says Letteriello. “And Elizabeth continues to build. It’s taking on a life of its own.”

The new federal ConnectED initiative should bring fast connections to almost all schools and libraries within five years. The project, a combination of enhanced broadband connectivity and teacher development, aims to leverage private-sector innovations to benefit students. President Obama also highlighted the role of libraries as partners in improving digital citizenship. Now it’s up to us. What experiences could we provide to our students and patrons if we had superior broadband?

I have four personal Cs of connectivity: content, creation, community, and concurrency. The benefits of the first two are predictable. But the real power of ConnectED lies in the potential of the last two.

Content is the gift and curse of greater broadband. As bandwidth increases, content grows to fill network capacity. While we might imagine expanded content to mean more enriched ebooks and multimedia-enhanced databases, a huge portion of many school networks is clogged with security camera footage.

It doesn’t have to be that way. But libraries need to understand how network configurations and technologies like traffic shaping can provide better, consistent connectivity for all broadband traffic by throttling select bandwidth-hogging services. Security cameras, for example, could be capped at 30 percent of bandwidth. So streaming video to classrooms could have a guaranteed consistent level of performance.

There’s also the issue of net neutrality, which seeks a position that doesn’t favor content from certain Internet providers, and makes traffic-shaping technologies especially important to understand. Service providers could use these technologies to slow down access to content from competitors.

On to my next C. Increased bandwidth expands the capability to create. Schools and libraries could use new resources to publish student- and teacher-authored materials. Think flipped classrooms. Teacher lectures are being recorded with interactive whiteboards and/or cameras, and being pushed out for students to view outside of school. Libraries might record presentations to share with a broader audience, too.

This idea is inexorably linked to the third C: community. A school or library with gigabit broadband in a community without high-speed access will struggle. So, institutions must tackle community access issues first, perhaps even by becoming local hubs for Internet service delivery. Once things are running smoothly, schools and libraries could support their larger communities by providing high-tech services, content delivery, and the creation or publication of locally important content.

Finally, the “ConnectEDness” that comes with high-speed connectivity holds great potential. Approaching gigabit speeds, interactions start to feel concurrent. One can truly be present in real time, even from a distance, as opposed to experiencing the molasseslike lag of high latency. Imagine what libraries could do with that.

We could build a support network to create richer virtual author visits by providing a space in the local library with high-speed broadband. If every library had a multimedia studio space for creation, speakers could use the same hardware for high-quality virtual presentations that feel like a live experience.

This just scratches the surface of things to do with high-speed broadband. Now’s the time to dream big—and to talk big. Share ideas. Establish the need for bandwidth in libraries before it arrives. Then, cross your fingers and hope that ConnectED will push through the morass of politics.

Sure, the Web is a key resource for educators, but what’s the best way to share the good stuff you’ve collected with students and teachers and keep it all organized?

EduClipper may be an answer. The free tool, launched this spring, seeks to provide a one-stop solution for K–12 by giving educators and students a simple, easy-to-use destination for curating and sharing online.

EduClipper was created by Adam Bellow, a former teacher and son of a high-school librarian who also works as a K–12 technology consultant. After hearing from educators who sought a visual content curation platform that was student friendly and school safe, Bellow set out to create a solution.

After last year’s testing period, eduClipper launched to the public in May and is now used in more than 450 classrooms. Brad Currie, middle school vice principal and supervisor of instruction for the Chester (NJ) School District, uses eduClipper with the 150 educators in his district as a professional development resource. Jason Fisher, a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher at Riddells Creek Primary School in Victoria, Australia, shares it with his students as a collaborative research tool. Both sing eduClipper’s praises. “Staff members find eduClipper to be a great one-stop resource with huge potential in terms of their own professional development and promoting student collaboration,” says Currie. Fisher particularly likes that his students can comment on their sources in a description area provided within eduClipper.

EduClipper is tailor-made for K–12. Teachers and administrators can create accounts for students as young as five with varying levels of permissions. Do you want your students to interact only with content from your classroom? No problem. Do you prefer a curation tool that doesn’t allow comments? That’s doable, too. EduClipper offers a walled-garden approach that schools can adjust to fit their needs, instead of simply providing the private-world binary that’s all too familiar in online platforms.

Using eduClipper is simple, especially for those already familiar with online curation tools like Pinterest. Content can be “clipped” either through the eduClipper site or by using the bookmarklet tool in the browser. In addition to making it easy to clip links and images, the site also lets you grab video, documents, and embed code from creation tools on the Web bookmarklet—a great way to integrate student work from Google Drive.

While you can discover other eduClips and reClip them (this is similar to retweeting on Twitter or repinning on Pinterest), the site also offers collaborative clipboards where groups can add items to a shared space. These features are great, but the innovation that educators might appreciate most is one that generates formatted citations for online content. I hope that this will make that ever-helpful student citation, “it came from Google,” a thing of the past.

During our testing period, we ran into a few bugs that made our experience of browsing and clipping content less than seamless. When we brought up these problems with an eduClipper representative, we were told that the organization was aware of these issues and that fixes were currently in the works.

It’s tempting to compare the user experience of eduClipper with Pinterest or Pocket, a popular content-saving application. But those platforms are further along, so it’s an unfair comparison to make at this time. We’re looking forward to seeing eduClipper develop and work out its bugs, since the platform truly addresses a gap for K–12 students and educators.

Bellow says, “I think that teachers will find it a great way to connect to, build, or strengthen a personal learning network where they can curate with like-minded educators and find awesome content that they can use in their classroom or share with their students.”

EduClipper is free, available globally for K–12, and supports IE8+, Safari 3+, Firefox 4+, and Chrome. A mobile app version is in the works, though a launch date has not been set.

Illustration by Harry Campbell

By Chad Sansing

Our classroom glows with activity. One kid drafts a how-to article in which he explains the steps involved in wiring a cardboard Minecraft controller. Another writes a branching-path, choose-your-own-adventure story in Twine, a free, downloadable interactive fiction app. A student who’s claimed throughout his middle-school career that he isn’t a writer leans close to his laptop screen, finding and fixing coding errors. He composes, compiles, and debugs more than 100 lines of code to light up a three-by-three-light LED display plugged into his laptop.

A pair of especially curious students sits huddled around our newest computer, an exposed-faced circuit board smaller than a paperback book. It’s called a Raspberry Pi. They’re watching how the code they write in one window changes the course of a game in another. They may not know it yet, but these kids are playing with an open-source computing platform that just might change the way we teach young people how to interact with computers.

What is Raspberry Pi, and how do I get started?

It’s a $25 computer that fits in the palm of your hand. While you supply the mouse, monitor, and keyboard connection, your “RPi” supplies the rest. It comes with a Linux-based operating system (an open-source alternative to Windows and Mac OSX) called Raspbian. The operating system is on a Micro SD card.

With its astounding price and flexible capabilities, the Raspberry Pi has the potential to challenge the digital divide and make coding in schools as commonplace as textbooks. Computing could truly become about what kids can make rather than what schools can buy. And making coding affordable for all students could foster creative, independent computing in a way that downloading the latest app does not.

The RPi was developed at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory under the leadership of Eben Upton, trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Concerned about the lack of programming in schools and the reluctance of parents to let kids hack expensive computers at home, the Foundation members set out to put the Raspberry Pi into kids’ hands so they could experiment with code and physical computing in a simple, cheap way. After alpha and beta phases in 2011, the Raspberry Pi went on sale in 2012, selling more than 500,000 devices by September of that year.

To get the little device up and going, a new user can either download Raspbian on a Micro SD card to boot the RPi or purchase a card preinstalled. A good way to start is with a card already loaded with Scratch (a popular plug-n-play visual programming language developed for kids at MIT) and IDLE (which allows for the use of Python, another programming language).

Scratch, used widely in schools and clubs, lets kids program animations and games through a visual interface. IDLE helps kids author text-based code to control circuits or actions on screens. It’s amazing to insert these tools into the RPi and watch a computer come to life from a tiny hard drive the size of a fingernail.

What if I don’t understand coding technology?

Don’t worry. There are many ways to get up to speed on the RPi. Among a host of online resources (see sidebar below), David S. Whale’s visual guide to starting a club helps educators and technical support staff get the RPi ready for classroom use. Fortunately for librarians, Whale, a school science ambassador in the UK, and other early RPi adopters have shared many strategies for purchasing, configuring, and using these diminutive computers with kids.

In addition to searching for online help, consider asking your IT person—or better, some tinkering-inclined students—to walk you through RPi, as my colleague Melissa Techman, a K–5 librarian in Albemarle County, Virginia, did, with great results.

Techman asked some sixth- and eighth- grade students at a local student-led professional development session to teach her how to use the RPi. “I was hiding a fear of anything electrical, but I wanted to get past that,” Techman says. She was motivated in part because she wanted to work with Teen Tech Girls, a local organization dedicated to helping girls find pathways to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers and projects.

“My student mentors patiently showed how the connections worked and got me started reading circuit schematics,” says Techman. They showed her how to write simple code in Arduino, an open-source software for physical computing, in order to make lights blink in a pattern.

Within a week of that first learning session, Techman started Scratch and Minecraft lunch groups at her school. Another great outcome: The tutorial “gave me the confidence to learn alongside my own inventive young students and to try new things with several programs,” she says.

For novices like Techman, learning to program with Scratch on a computer you assemble yourself is one of those experiences that shows how fulfilling it is to become a coder and maker. Once we know that feeling, it becomes a happy task to imagine how reading, writing, and math relate to planning physical computing projects and composing code.

Techman also came away from her student session inspired with ideas for physical computing and writing projects to use with upper elementary grades. In addition to starting multiage Scratch, Minecraft, and physical computing mentoring groups in her school, she plans to partner with a local high school to find mentors for her young students. The high schoolers could help the younger kids write their own Web pages using Mozilla Webmaker’s Thimble platform, among other exercises.

Photograph courtesy of Raspberry Pi Foundation

What kind of physical computing can I do with the Raspberry Pi?

Using the RPi, kids can connect Scratch with Microsoft Kinect to write programs controlled by a player’s body. Or they can plug an Arduino circuit board into a laptop to light up or move attached objects by writing small “sketches”—short programs—of code.

Working with Python and IDLE to run a circuit or to modify a game like Minecraft makes it clear to kids how computers control the devices around us. Programming a blinking LED light or a Minecraft building helps them see how what we do with code translates into what happens virtually, on screen, as well as in the physical world of electricity.

They can use a MaKey MaKey board—a small, cheap ($50) circuit board built on the Arduino platform—to wire up anything from bananas to books. MaKey MaKey boards act as bridges between computers and other objects that can “talk” to Scratch like hand-held video game controllers. Anything conductive can become a part of a kid’s controller with MaKey MaKey. For example, in one well-known MaKey MaKey project, bananas can and do act as keys of an on-screen piano (demonstration). A wire from the MaKey MaKey connects to each banana. Another wire—the “earth contact”—goes from the board to the user. When the user touches the banana, the board registers the completed circuit and tells the computer to play a note.

Another idea: Make a digital book project with MaKey MaKey. It’s possible for a kid to animate a story in Scratch and then to “turn” its pages using a MaKey MaKey connected to her computer and a physical book decorated with conductive material like graphite or tin foil. The author can wire a decorated page of her book to a MaKey MaKey, hold the earth contact, and then tap her book to complete a circuit. The MaKey MaKey then tells the computer to advance her story on-screen.

Another very useful Raspberry Pi extension for physical computing, called Cobbler, connects the computer to a breadboard (a kind of pegboard for circuits) so users can write short programs that control physical parts like lights, motors, sensors.

Arduino is another great open-source software for physical computing. The Arduino sketch pad, a free download, provides embedded help as the learner writes programming commands.

Photograph by flickr.com/skokiepl

What else can kids make with Raspberry Pi?

Brad Jones, a youth technology librarian for the Skokie (IL) Public Library, runs a “Codebots” club for elementary school students, with the help of two staffers. Recently, kids in the club used Raspberry Pi computers to run Scratch and write programs for LEGO WeDo kits, another example of physical computing for kids.

“Try! Fail! Fix!” the kids were chanting. I was impressed by how patient these LEGO natives were. Things would break, and they’d shrug. “That’s OK. That’s how it goes with LEGOs,” says Jones.

Projects like this serve as ready pathways to increasingly sophisticated endeavors using the same open technology—like the recently Kickstarted “Brick Pi” project that uses Raspberry Pis to run robots built from Lego Mindstorm/NXT kits.

In my own middle school classroom, one eighth grader has learned how to run Minecraft: Pi Edition. He’s started using IDLE and programming tutorials to change the way he plays the game. For example, he created a never-ending bridge right under his avatar’s feet. A stone appears in front of his character wherever he walks so that he can never fall into water or lava—or fall from a great height while exploring the sky. By altering the materials that make up his “bridge,” my student can actually leave multihued trails that make his avatar into a kind of paintbrush walking the land. When feeling silly, we also make the LEDs on the breadboard blink as we play.

As the student puts it, “You can customize the technology to do whatever you want. You feel like you’ve accomplished something that’s actually useful and really cool.”

The bigger picture

Using tools like the RPi to bring the Maker movement into libraries and schools is a powerful way to combat academic passivity. Kim Wilkens, the founder of Teen Tech Girls, sees other benefits from learning to code and physical computing.

“Being able to code opens new avenues to create and explore,” says Wilkens. It “helps everyone build an understanding of the role of hardware and software in the technology we use and take for granted every day.”

Wilkens has found that by late elementary school, many girls lose sight of imagining themselves in computer or engineering careers. For such girls, engaging in coding, making, and physical computing with women mentors in formal and informal learning spaces helps them see that technology overlaps many fields. It’s not just for those who study “serious math” in high school or college.

Several major organizations allied with kids and educators, such as the MacArthur-supported Digital Media & Learning Hub, the Mozilla Foundation (webmaker.org /en-US), and the National Writing Project, are investing heavily in connected learning around code, making, and physical computing. This kind of support should encourage us to set our young male and female students loose on code. Where there is room for code—which encompasses art, creation, and inquiry—there is room for curiosity and empowerment. With a tool like Raspberry Pi, it takes just a small investment and a willingness to learn for us all to code, make, and connect with other people who are doing the same.

Photograph by flickr.com/skokiepl

1. Visit a site like Adafruit to find a starter kit that’s right for you. I suggest a kit that has all the cords you’ll need, a Cobbler extension kit, and a Micro SD card preinstalled with the Raspbian Wheezy operating system.

2. Gather old and unsupported mice, keyboards, and monitors from around your school, library, or community.

3. Once your kit arrives, assemble your Raspberry Pi! Check online tutorials for any help you need.

4. Follow the on-screen start-up prompts to get everything running.

5. Pick a project—for starters, try to make a single LED blink using your RPi. Document your progress and publish it online for others to see.

6. Keep your RPi and LED on display and invite kids and community members to change little bits of the code—like how long the light stays on—to dip their feet into physical computing. As interest grows, invite kids to create a club with you.

7. Keep documenting what folks make with the RPi and curate a display of their work in your learning space. You can encourage kids to do the same and publish their learning.

8. Pick a next step: Start learning how to install and program software like Minecraft: Pi Edition on your RPi or perhaps set up another computer or two around the first.

Raspberry Pi Quick Start guide

Raspberry Pi project ideas from MAKE magazine

An Adafruit Raspberry Pi starter kit for purchase

Great Raspberry Pi Projects Created by Kids Winners at the Cambridge Computing Centre 

Minecraft Pi Edition

David S. Whale (@whaleygeek) on setting up a Raspberry Pi club

An 11 year old’s blog on Raspberry Pi Projects

Chad Sansing (csansing@gmail.com) teaches middle school language arts in Staunton, VA. He works with the National Writing Project and Mozilla’s Webmaker project to champion kids’ connected learning.

During a maker party at the New York Hall of Science, kids used
MaKey MaKey circuit boards and Scratch programming language.
Photo courtesy NYSCI

Tinkerers of all ages are flexing their creative muscles during the Summer of Making and Connecting, a global project geared to empower digital crafters and match people with maker activities, online or on the street.

Running from June to mid-September, the campaign offers dozens of ways for kids, parents, and educators to make stuff digitally during the summer months and beyond. The venture is sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP) Educator Innovator and the Mozilla Foundation.

“People really love to play and make something,” says Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, NWP’s director of national programs and site development. “There’s a piece deep within us that wants to create, and we’re seeing it across so many domains.”

The project kicked off in June with the Maker Party, an online happening linking interested makers with design events, maker camps, coding challenges, and other activities. The idea was for people to bring their do-it-yourself spirit and apply digital tools to remix, collaborate, and share their creations over the open Web. Summertime makers are using the hashtag #clmooc on Twitter and elsewhere to tag their projects. You can also follow activities on the NWP Educator Innovator blog.

Makers can participate in real life, from Brooklyn to Uruguay, at physical events listed on the Maker Party site. Virginia-based educators Chad Sansing (@chadsansing) and Melissa Techman (@mtechman) launched a program called #nerdcamp this spring, and it’s continuing through the summer. On a recent July day at #nerdcamp, a mix of adults and one student were happily huddled together programming Arduinos, open-sourced circuit boards, to work with LED displays.

“The whole point is to tinker and see,” says Sansing, a language arts teacher at Shelburne Middle School in Staunton, VA (and author of the SLJ feature story “Life with Raspberry Pi”). Not all #nerdcamp projects succeed, however. That doesn’t matter to Sansing—and it shouldn’t to participants, either, he says. He especially likes it when grown-ups experience the rewards of “what it’s like to work on something you want to work on, for a long time, where you’re fully engaged.”

Virtual Summer of Making and Connecting participants include Susan Angel (@zsuzsannangel), a sixth- and seventh-grade teacher in Vancouver, BC, who built a short slideshow using Haiku Deck to promote her teaching and learning credo. Valerie Hill (@valibrarian), a teacher librarian at the Lewisville (TX) Independent School District and adjunct instructor at Texas Woman’s University, built a 3-D virtual book about media before and after Gutenberg. Adapting templates that Sansing had made, Techman crafted a page featuring thoughts people encounter while writing.

What happens to this outpouring of activity come September? The Summer of Making and Connecting “is not meant to live in the summer and die,” says Techman, a school librarian at Broadus Wood Elementary School in Earlysville, VA. “We want to bring ideas from the summer into classrooms, public libraries, and to other constituents.”

NWP’s Educator Innovator project is working on strategies to keep the creative connections flowing. And for those who didn’t get a jumpstart on the event this year, NWP and its partners plan to launch another one in the summer of 2014.

“This really is a movement,” says Eidman-Aadahl. “We want every young person to see that they can be a creator and maker of their own life.”

“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.

Teachers love ClassDojo, according to SLJ Cool Tools columnist Richard Byrne, who’s says the tool enables educators to easily track class attendance, take notes on student behavior, and offer real-time positive reinforcement for good behavior in the classroom.

The update reflects educators’ response to the app, its developers say. Many teachers know students individually, and “Class Sharing” now allows them to pool observations, offer consistent feedback across classrooms, and support students together.

ClassDojo provides students with “visual and audio feedback triggered using a smartphone, tablet, or computer,” the developers note. “It engages parents and students to effect changes in behavior outside of the classroom as well.”

The updated Dojo has two settings, “full access” and “read only.” With “full access,” different teachers can work together on their feedback to students. Teachers can use “read only” to share behavioral progress in their class with administrators and other teachers.

“Real-time reinforcement of positive behavior, especially when provided consistently by all the people who care about a student, influences future behavior and makes a lasting impact on a child’s development,” adds Sam Chaudhary, co-founder of ClassDojo and a former teacher.

The company is offering a limited number of updated ClassDojo ’early access’  slots to teachers.

“The Teen Book Finder is a great resource for library workers, educators, parents, and teens to utilize to find award-winning books and recommended reading,” says Shannon Peterson, YALSA president. “We’re really happy it has received such a great response since our members work so hard and enthusiastically to identify the best in young adult literature.”

The app, available as a free download through iTunes, is currently compatible on the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, with an Android version in the works for 2014, according to YALSA, the young adult division of the American Library Association. It has already been downloaded approximately 6,000 times in 2013. The organization plans to update the app again in January, 2014, following ALA’s Midwinter Meeting and Youth Media Awards.

The Teen Book Finder enables users to search for books by title, author, award or list, award or list year, or genre, and its “Find It!” button, powered by the OCLC WorldCat Search API, shows users where to locate a book in a nearby library. Each day, “Three Hot Picks” are featured from the database. The “Favorites” button allows users to create individualized reading lists; users are also able to share titles found via Twitter and Facebook.

The development and launch of YALSA’s Teen Book Finder was made possible through a grant funded by the Dollar General Literacy Foundation.

Longtime SLJ reviewer and contributor John Peters co-chaired the 2013 GWS committee. Peters shares, “The committee sifted through dozens and dozens of recommended sites, looking for that elusive combination of reliable content and inspired presentation that Great Web Sites for Children have to display. We have some real ‘finds’ here, and I think that children (and their teachers and parents) who spend even a few minutes exploring them will be surprised and delighted.”

Co-chair Kimberly Probert Grad, library information supervisor at Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library adds, “The newest additions to Great Web Sites for Kids feature a blend of fact and fun, including sites offering solid homework resources, current news for tweens in Spanish or English, STEM activities, engineering for girls, and the delightfully zany Captain Underpants. Two additional sites offer resources on Common Core Standards and Learning Disabilities.”

Newly evaluated and accepted sites are added by the committee three times a year. It also reviews all sites twice a year to guarantee that they are still relevant, appropriate, and accessible.

The newly added sites are:

B.J. Pinchbeck’s Homework Helper
Common Core – State Standards Initiative
Dav Pilkey’s Extra Crunchy Website-O-Fun
Engineer Girl
Howtosmile.org
National Center for Learning Disabilities
Start with a Book
Tween Tribune
Tween Tribune en Español
Wonderopolis

See also:
Joyce Valenza’s Picks from the Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning

Kiera Parrott’s Picks from the Best Apps for Teaching and Learning

Learning to code is a popular topic in educational circles these days. For good reason. When young people code their own apps, games, stories, or websites they have a chance to think critically, troubleshoot, problem solve, and collaborate. It’s a way to create something real that can be seen and used by lots of different people.

Of course, not all teachers or library staff are proficient coders. But, we don’t have to be. There are several apps and Web-based tools that make it possible to learn, with kids, the basics of coding. These also give young people the chance to try things out on their own and even teach adults how to create with code.

The below screencast provides an overview of Daisy the Dinosaur and Hopscotch, two free iPad apps that take a similar building block approach to learning to code. Daisy is for the youngest coders, early elementary age, and Hopscotch is just right for upper elementary age kids.  With each app, children use code to move characters around the screen. Hopscotch offers more characters to move, a greater range of movements, and more options for customization.

Daisy the Dinosaur and Hopscotch are far from the only two options available to help get kids and teens coding. Tynker and Scratch are two Web-based tools. As you’ll see in this screencast (below), Tynker is designed for those who want to develop coding projects and lessons for youth. What’s great about the platform is that you can have kids and teens develop their own coding projects and use Tynker to teach others how to accomplish various coding feats.

Scratch is already a popular learn-to-code software used in libraries and schools. In May MIT, the producer of Scratch, launched a Web-based version of the program. It’s just as good its software counterpart. Given the tools available online and the large educator and youth Scratch community already in place, it’s well worth checking out.

Handling documents on your school site

No one loves having to download a document from a website in order to read it. Even the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox, which display PDFs within a browser, require a new window or tab in order to see a file. If you’re downloading a Word document, you have to leave your browser entirely.

To resolve this problem, use a service like Scribd or Box to embed and display important documents in one place on your site. First, upload your PDFs or Word documents to either service. Then, select the “embed” option to display the files on your site. If your document has multiple pages, visitors can scroll through them without having to leave the site. Embedded files are also printable by downloading and printing through the Scribd and Box document viewers. There’s an example of a Scribd. document display on my blog. Since Scribd and Box both use HTML5, they’re fully accessible on iPads.

Streamlining permissions forms

September means sending students home with a lot of paper forms that need parent signatures and then waiting—hoping?—for their return. You can bypass the black hole of student backpacks entirely by adding DropItToMe to your site. The service allows your site to receive files from visitors. Here’s how it works: after you’ve added a DropItToMe link to your Web page, visitors can click it to upload a file, which then goes to your Dropbox account. Dropbox gives you 2MB of free storage—more than adequate for collecting scanned documents from a classroom’s worth of parents. I used the DropItToMe and Dropbox combination to collect students’ work for a semester and never ran out of room. More free space, however, is available through Dropbox’s many promotions.

An alternative to adding DropItToMe to your site is to collect files directly in Dropbox through an email service. Send To Dropbox is a free tool that allows you to create a dedicated email address for your Dropbox account. This saves you the hassle of opening attachments within your personal email.

Save time with voice recognition messages

After you’ve been teaching all day, listening to voicemail messages can be a laborious task. Why not use voice-to-text tools so you can read the messages instead, getting to the main points faster? Google Voice or Speak Pipe widgets are handy to have on your website or blog. Both free services (available only in the U.S.) give site visitors the option of leaving a voicemail message, which is automatically transcribed to text. You can read them in your account’s inbox. If the text is unclear, the audio recording is also accessible.

Technical improvements aside, it’s also important to assess your site’s visual aesthetics, and adding some simple design elements can make a big difference. How effective is your choice of font style, size, and color? Your font style conveys a lot about your site, you, and your organization. For instance, Comic Sans in white on a dark green background evokes an association with chalkboards. Moreover, light fonts on dark backgrounds can strain the eye. And while Comic Sans or a chalkboard font might appeal to second graders, it could suggest a lack of seriousness to adults visiting your site. Save the fun fonts for short headings and articles that kids will read, and try using a standard Verdana or Georgia font for parent-oriented pages. Finally, is your home page cluttered looking? Consider putting only the most important information there and moving the rest to subpages.

Incorporating a few new elements into your Web presence this summer could pay dividends in the fall, with an improved site that looks cool and also saves you time.

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.

“Hispanic-Latino families are pioneers in adapting new technologies in their communications practices and approaches to parenting and learning,” Dr. Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, tells School Library Journal. “The new AJC initiative is intended to better understand those research-based practices and policies that will support young families to grow and prosper in a digital age.”

Adds Emily Kirkpatrick, vice president of NCFL, “We are continually working to develop, implement and improve innovative programs to support and accelerate intergenerational learning among families. [AJC] is a great step towards linking research to program development, merging new technologies with vital learning opportunities.”

The origin of AJC was spurred by the Hispanic-Latino Families & Digital Technologies Forum that convened last June in Washington, DC. Present at the event were experts representing organizations like the Pew Hispanic Center, National Council of La Raza, and the National Center for Latino Child & Family Research. AJC released last week a synthesis [PDF] of that discussion, complete with a report reviewing existing research and best practices in the field. Some of the key points examined included the vast differences among Hispanics from various countries of origin, language and education attainment, and immigration and socioeconomic status.

Mark Lopez, the associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, points out that “ownership rates and uses of these new digital technologies vary widely within the Hispanic-Latino population, particularly by education level, generational status of immigration, and dominant language,” while Monica Lozano, impreMedia CEO, emphasizes the transformative influence effective digital media use can have on immigrant communities. She argues that, “while the access gap between social groups is diminishing, an information gap remains, making digital literacy a key concern in today’s society.” Participant interviews from the day are also available to the public on YouTube.

AJC would like to work with libraries in the future as a viable location for research and implementation of the council’s findings, although Levine says that would probably not occur before 2014. In the meantime, several field studies are already underway.

AJC will support field studies directed by Dr. Vikki Katz of Rutgers University examining the roll-out of the national Connect2Compete digital media literacy initiative in California and Arizona. It will also conduct an analysis of a national survey conducted by Ellen Wartella of Northwestern University of media usage by Latino parents and their children ages 0–10.

Levine encourages librarians interested in participating in or serving as a site for future research to contact Lori Takeuchi directly. Librarians should specify how such research would serve their local community as well as libraries and Hispanic families more broadly.