Ideas

The Book App Alliance aims to help locate quality book apps amid the tides of Disney, Dora, and Dr. Seuss products. Alliance founders also want to foster best practices.

Make It @ Your Library, in collaboration with Instructables.com and the American Library Association, has finally launched its searchable website, makeitatyourlibrary.org, for librarians seeking maker space ideas and projects. Make It @ Your Library—an initiative developed through the ILEAD USA program over the past year—aims to help librarians realize maker projects in their own communities at low cost.

Back in May I was excited to discover Voice Comments–a great tool for personally adding voice feedback to student writing or collaborative work. Recently, the app relaunched with a new interface and a bunch of impressive new features, as Kaizena.  (In Japan, Kaizen refers to a philosophy of continuous improvement.) If Google Docs is a way of life at [...]

Librarian Misti Jenkins, formerly an English teacher at the Nashville, TN, high school she now serves, shares her experiences in adapting from a predominately Spanish-speaking population of English Language Learners (ELL) to one that is comprised largely of Nepali and Burmese refugees. Here are her recommendations for ways to reach out to all students, regardless of their backgrounds.

TeachWithMovies offers access to more than 350 lesson plans and learning guides for movies and films. I’ve long been a big fan of reading and studying movies. I’ve been a fan of this site’s rich curricular materials for many years. I just discovered that I do not need to re-subscribe. The site is now available for free (though it will [...]

In SLJ's recent “Common Core and the Public Librarian” one-hour live webcast, Olga Nesi, regional coordinator for the New York City Department of Education, Division of Library Services, and Nina Lindsay, the children’s services coordinator for Oakland (CA) Public Library, discussed the national initiative and, in particular, what it means for public librarians.

Teen Read Week (TRW) kicked off with a lively Twitter chat among supporters of teen literacy and leisure reading on October 15. SLJ, Blink, Goodreads, Merit Press, Soho Teen, and AASL participated in the hour-long virtual conversation, highlighting ways librarians can help celebrate teen reading. The following are some of the tweets that resonated with SLJ editors.

Facebook has announced that it is changing its privacy options so that teens ages 13 through 17 can choose whether or not to post publicly on the site, a reversal of the company's previous policy. Teens also will now be able to turn on "Follow" so that their public posts can be seen in people’s News Feeds.

Face it.  The news is not written for most of our kids, especially those who are struggling readers or new English learners. I showed Newsela to my ELL and several of my ELA teachers early this semester and we have some devoted fans. Launched in June, and the winner of a Gates Foundation Literacy Courseware Challenge, Newsela publishes articles [...]