Technology

For the growing numbers of us searching for online courses, as well as online educational resources, the portals are quickly growing in both number and size. Finding the best or most relevant content may be a challenge.  Sites like Kayak take care of of the would-be traveler with a cross-portal search, but what’s the would-be [...]

Digital technologies are impacting American middle and high school students’ writing in many ways, both good and bad, a new national report from the Pew Research Center shows. According to the survey, tech tools provide significant advantages to learning—although students are still having trouble with informal grammar and navigating the issues of plagiarism, citation, and fair use.

The School Library System of the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership (GVEP) has announced the launch this week of “Here Be Fiction,” a site devoted to the discovery of fiction ebooks available with school library friendly licensing terms, with over 500 ebooks from 17 participating publishers.

Filmmaker Cullen Hoback's work represents a treasure trove of ideas for those who want to connect domestic spying and the death of privacy to civics, media studies, ICT, and political theory—not to mention information literacy and digital literacy specifically.

StarWalk Kids Media has announced that it has made all 160-plus ebooks in its collection available free of charge to children, families, and educators during the entire month of July. In just the first three days after the initiative was launched via Twitter (#PopUpLibrary), nearly 3,000 ebooks have been read, the company says.

In a powerful, proactive reminder of the principles for which our profession stands, yesterday ALA announced the launch of ALA Liberty, a new website that contains tools libraries can use to host educational sessions and public forums that help Americans understand their First and Fourth Amendment rights. ALA Liberty offers guides and tip sheets for libraries as [...]

The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Street Workshop have created the Aprendiendo Juntos (“Learning Together) Council (AJC) to identify models and practical strategies to improve digital literacy for Hispanic-Latino families. AJC plans to use the findings to influence public and private sector investments in effective programs for the community on a regional and national scale.

Emily Gover and Caity Selleck, information literacy librarians and content developers for EasyBib and its new platform, ResearchReady, posit that libraries should stay open later hours in order to serve students' research needs.

New rules take effect this month intended to protect kids’ privacy online, and some librarians are worried. Some say that the more stringent regulations may impede mobile app use in elementary schools—and also prevent kids from recreationally sharing favorite hobby sites with each other.