Technology

Lerner Digital has launched its Lerner Digital eReader App for Android devices, featuring more than 3,000 available K–12 ebook titles across many interest areas and genres. The app, which is available free in the Google Play Store, is the Android equivalent of the app that the publisher debuted for the iPad in October 2011.

If you are looking for a change of pace multimedia tool that spices up and informs your presentations, you should really spend some time with PowToon. Its basic (free!) features allow you to create a video up to five minutes in length using their music, animations, and various templates.

 The Mozilla Foundation has launched a new  Web Literacy Standard intended to serve as a roadmap for competent Web use and comprising “the skills and competencies people need to read, write, and participate effectively on the Web,” according to Mozilla’s site. Launched during the nonprofit organization’s October 25–27 Mozilla Festival, the Standard features recommendations for [...]

John Locke's Department of Urban Betterment (DUB) is behind the 2012 installation of mini-libraries in New York City telephone booths. Now DUB is at it again with the concept and design of the Inflato Dumpster, giving the phrase "dumpster diving" a whole new meaning.

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 [...]

The most important resource for creating a successful library maker space—whether in a school or public library—is one’s own community, according to librarians Justin Hoenke, Amy Koester, and Michelle Cooper. Strong relationships and community involvement, not big budgets and high-tech gadgetry, are key to reaching children and teens, the trio of makers say.

If schools want their students to become readers for life, then school libraries should be sure to include fiction ebooks as they build their digital collections, Debbie Swartz, Library Technology Facilitator, Mesquite (TX) Independent School District (ISD), noted during her “Meeting Students Where THEY Learn,” presentation during The Digital Shift: Reinventing Libraries, hosted by Library Journal and School Library Journal.