How to use this Page

Name: Space Station Research Explorer
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS and Android

Space enthusiasts rejoice! At the beginning of last month NASA released a new (and free!) app that brings users aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with a particular focus on all of the research that is conducted aboard it. The app is divided into five sections: Experiments, Facilities, Benefits, Media, and Links.

The Experiments section, which is the first one that users encounter when they open the app, includes information on the wide range of experiments that have been conducted by various parties on the ISS. The section is divided into six topical subsections: Biology and Biotechnology, Earth and Space Science, Educational Activities and Outreach, Human Research, Physical Science, and Technology Development and Demonstration. Each of those subsections is further subdivided into deeper areas of focus. This diversity of topics shows the breadth of the work done on the ISS and also means that there is something to capture the imagination of almost anyone with an interest in science. Once you choose a specific subsection within a field, you can read about all of the related experiments that have been conducted on the ISS through extensive descriptions, media such as photos and diagrams, and links to related content elsewhere online. You can also search through the experiments using an included search feature or sort them by sponsor or the expedition during which they were conducted. This section was probably my favorite of the entire app because it offers so much rich information about the research that is done on the ISS.

However, this is not to take away from the other sections, including the Facilities section. This part of the app opens on an exterior picture of the space station and allows users to navigate to any of three sections of the space station. Once you have zoned in on a specific section, you see a detailed representation of that area of the ISS and you can pan and zoom using the standard pinch and swipe motions on your device. If you see something of interest, you can click on it to get a detailed image and brief description of what that section of the mechanics does. Next up is the Benefits section of the app which talks about how work on the ISS has been been translated to applications on Earth and the educational benefits in which the ISS has been instrumental. This section includes links out to further information on the NASA website, as well as brief descriptions within the app.

The Media section includes access to one game that can be played within the app and which demonstrates how G forces impact the trajectory of a ball thrown in the ISS. It also offers access to a variety of educational podcasts and videos. Finally, the Links section of the app connects users with related apps and web content from NASA and the ISS to help users move beyond what is included in the app itself.

This app is a bit text heavy, but thought has clearly been put into the design, which is engaging, and the navigation, which is clear. As a nice bonus feature, while content is loading, users are presented with pictures of the ISS and information about both the facilities and the activities undertaken on the space station. This is a nice educational app for use in STEM programming or for teens who are already fascinated with the space program.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog's App of the Week Archive.

Title: Nuzzel
Cost:: Free
Platform: iOS 7 or later

Nuzzel is a great way to aggregate specific aspects of a Twitter or Facebook feed. The app pulls together posts from your feed(s) that include links and creates a stream of just those posts. The stream includes posts from those you follow, friends of those you follow, and news you might have missed. It also will keep track of articles that you have recently read within the app - when you've clicked on a link in a post from a friend or a friend of a friend.

Settings in the app allow you to sort posts within a particular period of time - say just the past 24 hours - and to display the posts by most popular - say Tweeted five times by those you follow on Twitter - or by most recently posted/Tweeted.

It seems like a simple idea, it is, but it can really be a bit life changing for you, the teachers you work with, teens, and others who sometimes feel overwhelmed by what 24 hours - or more or less - comes through in their social media streams. As a library staff member working with teens and other educators if you like to use Twitter as a professional development tool, you might miss several hours of posts on Twitter. As a result you might feel like there's no way to easily go back and find what you missed. But, with Nuzzel there is. While you won't see what your friends on Twitter or Facebook are posting about their lives with Nuzzel you can easily just see what's posted that links to an article or web page or website of interest. It's a perfect way to keep up with news without being sidetracked by the fun and great things your friends are doing.

One of my favorite Nuzzel features are the links that are from friends of friends. I'm a fan of that because that's where I usually find the resources that I would probably have missed if I stayed within the silo of those that I follow. This is a great part of the app that will probably be of interest to educators and teens too. It's always easy to find out what the colleagues and friends you talk with and see every day are finding interesting, but what about those who might be a little removed from one's every day world? Maybe they have some interesting things for you to know about as well. I could see teachers using this app feature as a way to expand their own research and professional development and in working with teens as a way to expand their knowledge of topics beyond what they might find within traditional sources and through friends and family members.

Nuzzel also has some good features for saving and sharing content including the ability to post links via Buffer, add to a reading list, open in Safari and share via email, text, etc. The look and feel of the iPhone and iPad versions are a bit different. The iPad version of the app allows you to look at feeds individually - friends, friends of friends, and so on. I like that capability but it's not really a problem to not have that in the iPhone app, particularly because of screen size and capabilities.

Don't let the simplicity of Nuzzel fool you into thinking it's not worth checking out. I think you'll find that it's the simplicity that really makes it worth your time.

For more apps for teens and the librarians who serve them, check out the App of the Week archive. Have a suggestion for an App of the Week? Let us know.

Title: Duet Display
Platform: iOS 7 and All Macs (Windows is in the works)
Cost: 14.99

I don't know about you, but I often like to work in a dual screen environment. One in which I can be looking at a document to refer to on one screen and look at or work on a related document on another screen. I'm also a fan of dual display environments in which I can easily interact with both screens and in which the two screens actually talk with each other. I haven't been able to do that between my MAC and iPad or iPhone, that is until Duet Display launched. Now with the app on all of my devices - laptop, iPad, and iPhone - I can work between screens easily.

To get started with Duet Display you have to download the app to all of your devices. (You don't have to pay for the app each time, purchase it once and it's downloadable across devices.) Once installed open up the app on the two screens you want to work with - a laptop and iPad for example. Plug the iDevice into the MAC USB port - using the same cable used for charging your iDevice, voilå your iDevice is reading your MAC computer screen.

As with traditional dual display setups, you can move screens from your computer to your iDevice screen by dragging the content you want to show on the second screen "over" to the device. Your MAC's System Preferences is where you set up whether or not you drag content left or right to move it to the second screen. When viewing content on either screen you can use traditional mouse functions to move through the content, click on links, and so on.

The video below provides a good overview of how the interaction between the two screens works.

One of the comments that many reviewers are making about Duet Display is that there is no lag time between screens either when dragging content from one to the other or when interacting with the content on an iDevice. It's also quite seamless with no lag time when watching a video on one screen and taking notes or browsing other content on another.

While library staff working with teens are likely to find Duet Display useful professional projects, teens and teachers will most likely find it helpful as well. For example, teens working on research projects looking for easy access to digital research resources and their notes will find access to two two screens helpful. Teachers developing curriculum can review materials on one screen while updating their curriculum on another. These are just two ideas for teens and their teachers, I am sure there are a lot more possibilities for anyone using Duet Display in a formal or informal learning environment.

It may seem that a duel display isn't necessary when one has two devices at hand already. But, instead of having to move between devices and their keyboards and screens and so on, with Duel Display it's one set of keys and one mouse with two screens. If you or the teens you work with haven't tried working in an duel display environment, check it out. If you have been looking for a high-quality duel display app for your iDevices and MACs, Duet Display is it. The price is worth the gain in productivity.

On a side-note, the Mountie Clip looks like a very useful accessory to use with your devices and Duet Display. I'll be trying the Clip out for sure.

For more apps for teens and the librarians who serve them, check out the App of the Week archive. Have a suggestion for an App of the Week? Let us know.

Title: Aa

Platform: iOS and Android

Cost: Free, with in-app purchases

I discovered this addictive "waiting game" after watching our students staring, seemingly blankly, at their iPads, ready to spring when they see an opening. It might look like something out of The Manchurian Candidate, but while the central wheel twirls around, the player must gauge the perfect moment to add another spoke in the spaces remaining without knocking any of the existing elements. Any error sends you back to the adding all of the elements all over again.

Like Dots, the underlying gaming concept behind Aa couldn't be simpler. Any gesture on the screen inserts a spoke at the bottom of the spinning radius. But, by adding an element as you advance through each level, it quickly builds into a challenge as it becomes more difficult to insert a new one given the scant room available. Avoiding the impulse to "fire" spokes in a rapid-fire manner is the real test of patience and hand-eye coordination.

Aa is free, but the ability to skip and unlock levels are available as in-app purchases, as is a nominal charge to remove ads, which appear every few levels (just when a break can be welcome). The highest level you've mastered appears numerically in the center of the wheel, providing an immediate talking point based on skill.

General Adaptive Apps has a range of similar games using different shapes and objectives, but this seems to be their most popular incarnation. I think it might appeal to novice gamers getting new devices over the holiday, too.

For more apps for teens and the librarians who serve them, check out the App of the Week archive. Have a suggestion for an App of the Week? Let us know.

Throughout the year, YALSA's App of the Week bloggers review what's new and interesting in the app world for teens and the library staff that work with them. In this end of the year App of the Week post, we look at the top four apps that stood out to bloggers in 2014.

Canva
A favorite of YALSA Blogger Jen Scott Willis

Graphic design is a tricky business, and one that many of us don't realize is part of our job description until we're faced with a blank document and a list of almost-but-not-quite-right font choices. ' Canva, a free, web-based application' that lets you easily produce' professional-looking' designs, made this part' of the' job much easier for me when it debuted over a year ago. ' Now, with the introduction of the iPad app, the possibilities are both endless and mobile.

So far, I've used Canva's web app to design everything from icons for our online calendar to posters for programs and thank you cards for presenters, and I've heard glowing reports from teens of their successes using it for both school projects and social media posts.

The iPad app is not without its bugs --' pics can be slow to upload and there are sometimes hitches in the interface that you don't see in the web version -- however, the developers seem quick to respond to user feedback and offer updates. ' Meanwhile, the ease of use, professional results, and potential for collaboration that the iPad version offers' makes this a go-to for your toolkit.

Monument Valley
A favorite of YALSA Blogger Carli Spina

My top app this year is the game Monument Valley. Available for iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire devices, this is a beautiful game that was clearly designed with a great deal of thought. Everything from the architecture of the buildings that players must navigate, to the color scheme, to the music playing in the background comes together to create a mesmerizing experience. The puzzles themselves are, for the most part, fairly straightforward, but you will still want to continue playing to see more and more of this gorgeous world. The game was initially released for iOS devices in the spring and has already won a 2014 Apple Design Award and been named the best iPad app of the year.

New levels for the game were released in November, though somewhat controversially they are not included in the price of the original app and instead cost an additional $1.99. Given that these levels almost double the size of the app, fans of the original game will definitely want to download them. Now that Monument Valley is available on more platforms, it will undoubtedly find an increasing audience of devoted fans. I highly recommend giving it a try!

ScratchJr
A favorite of YALSA Blogger Linda Braun

The MIT coding program for kids and teens, Scratch, has been around for a long time. However, ScratchJr, the iPad app was released in the summer and it is a great way for young children to learn about programming and for staff that work with teens to learn that too.

ScratchJr doesn't have as many commands to work with as it's parent product Scratch, but it has plenty to get started with for those who are learning how to program in this way. Users can move characters in all directions, have the character speak, record narration, hide and show characters and more. Users can also add backgrounds and change the look of a character using some simple character editing tools.

Any adult that is wondering what this coding thing that people are talking about as a part of learning for children and teens is all about, should try out ScratchJr as a first step in their own learning. Teens working to help younger kids will do well learning ScratchJr as well. It's worth the time to take a look and think about how ScratchJr does have an impact on the teens and the families that you work with.

YikYak
A favorite of YALSA Blogger Wendy Stephens

If there is one app that has had an impact on youth culture in our communities in 2014, it would have to be YikYak. The app is designed for users to get a sense of what’s going on locally. YikYak lets you peek at othercommunities or college campuses, where use is huge, but can only post and vote (up or down) for Yaks in your immediate area. It doesn’t require a username, just proximity, though you can insert a “handle” if you wish.

YikYak has great potential for sharing what’s going on nearby – I’ve seen it used to advertise special retailer promotions discounts as well as crowd-source information on traffic conditions -- but in many schools, teens made anonymous threats or become victim of systematic bullying using the anonymity of the app.

It might be the digital version of a bathroom wall, but I wanted to write about YikYak because I think it and others apps of its type offer important opportunities for powerful conversations with teens about digital citizenship. Also, arrests related to content illustrate the need for helping young people understand that digital anonymity is somewhat of an illusion and that content posted through apps like YikYak remains identifiable.

Libraries should be safe spaces, so if cyberbullying in your area is an issue, you might want to investigate the geofencing option that prevents posting to YikYak from school campuses. Also good to know: five down votes will remove a Yak from the feed, so if you see something that slanders an individual, you can help make that content disappear.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog's App of the Week Archive.

Name: Dungeon Runner: Fitness Quest
Cost: Free
Platform:  iOS

The creators of Run, Zombies! Are back with another app that encourages players to exercise in the name of game play. This time, players control the fate of a small, pixilated knight with the help of their device's forward-facing camera and some fairly basic calisthenics.

Set the device six feet away and follow the old-school instructions at the bottom of the screen to help the knight navigate his way past five levels of baddies in the dungeon. Exercises -- including burpees, punches, jumping jacks, squats, and side-to-side shuffles -- all correspond to actions on the screen and the knight's success can depend on the speed in which the exercises are completed.

While the motion tracking isn't as seamless as an Xbox Kinect, and the number of calories burned during a session seems a little dubious, Dungeon Runner did get this player up and moving when all I wanted to do was eat seasonal pies and read books in front of the fireplace.  And for that, it gets all the stars.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog's App of the Week Archive.

Title: Sphere 360º

Platform: iOS, with some limitations

Cost: Free

Sphere 360º bills itself as "the future of photography." It adds a three dimensional aspects to your panoramic shots, with sometimes startling results. Be it a Siberian forest or an Italian coastline, there's a definite concrete virtual reality aspect to viewing a "sphere."

The gallery of shared spheres is pretty intimidating. Many are taken with a rotating gadget called a Motrr, which can be controlled wirelessly. There is an "easy" mode, but there is a definite art to creating a sphere. Additionally, you must be connected to a network, which could make capturing nature scenes difficult

To begin your sphere, you can scan a panorama or upload one saved to your camera roll. To complete the sphere, you use your finger to create details and depth, essentially zooming in and moving around to flesh out the experience of being there.

If that's not enough to get your teens interested, Kendall Jenner recently recommended it her recent Vogue interview with an enthusiastic "Download immediately."

Even is you never create a sphere, the curated collections with their intuitive and smooth navigation could be a boon for teachers  and librarians looking to take student beyond the herky-jerky vagueness of Google Earth. And it's too kinesthetic to it justice outside the app.

The current version doesn't seem to be supported on the latest Apple hardware, so it's the rare case where something interesting isn't available on the newest devices.

Creator Spherical also has a 4D video app called Play, which is also free for a limited time.

If you have a suggestion for an App of the Week, let us know, and be sure to check out more great Apps of the Week in our archive.

Name: Steller
Cost:  Free
Platform: iOS

Digital storytelling apps have a tendency to be cumbersome and not so conducive to telling stories on the go.  Not so with Steller, which lives up to its name by letting users combine text, photos, and video to create stories with the ease of an Instagram or Twitter post.

Users build their stories page by page, choosing the type (text, photo, or video) and layout before tweaking things like colors and fonts.  Design choices are limited, but result in a modern, professional-looking story that, once published, uses the parallax effect in iOS to produce an impressive 3D page-turning experience.

Publishing your story adds it to Steller's home page, where other users can like, comment, and follow your profile.  The stories can also be embedded into blogs or websites, emailed, or posted to Pinterest, Facebook, or Twitter.

So far, stories posted to Steller run the gamut from travelogues and fashion lookbooks to illustrated recipes and even short works of fiction, but the potential uses for libraries and teens are exciting:  book reviews, booklists, school projects, and portfolios would all be at home here.  Or, you could turn all the photos you take this holiday season into beautiful stories to share with your family and friends.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog's App of the Week Archive.

Name: Fragment
Cost: $1.99
Platform: iOS and Android

My previous App of the Week post discussed Matter, an app for creating otherworldly images. This time, I took a look at Fragment, another app from the same company, Pixite. As with Matter, this is an app that is aimed at making your pictures look beautiful and yet alien. You can import any image from your device and make it into a magical view through a prism that looks professionally done and completely transforms your original picture.

When you first open Fragment, you are given the option to start creating your first fragmented image or to view the “Inspiration” gallery to see how others have used the app. I found the images in the gallery to be particularly useful in seeing how the app could be used since some of the possibilities would not have immediately occurred to me without these examples. When you decide to “fragment” an image, you will have the option to import any image stored on your device, take a new photo with your device, or use one of the “Community Photos,” which have been contributed by other users for free use by anyone. Once you have selected an image, you can start adding effects to it. First, you will need to decide the aspect ratio you wish to use for the image. You can then move on to adding effects. When you purchase the basic app for $1.99, you have access to the two classics volumes, though there are four additional collections that you can purchase if you want to try additional effects after you have given it a try. Each of the two collections included in the basic version of the app includes over twenty different options for shapes or styles of fragments and each of those can be resized, aligned at different angles, and shifted on the image for an almost limitless number of combinations. In addition, the app allows you to change the underlying image by altering the light level, contrast, blur levels, and saturation of the image. You can test out as many variations as you like before making your final selection for each of the settings.

Once you are happy with your image, you can save it, share it via Instagram, share it via text message, Twitter, or email, send it to one of the other image apps on your device with two taps, or “refragment” it, which will take you back to the editing features. If you have other apps by Pixite on your device, Fragment also makes it easy to move your image from one app to the other for further editing if you want to add multiple effects to a single image. Whether you have used any of Pixite’s other apps or not, Fragment is an intuitive app that allows you to make fun and very unusual looking images that will really stand apart from the average online picture. If you enjoy taking, editing, and sharing images, it is worth checking out.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Name: Brushstroke
Cost: 2.99
Platform: iOS 7 or later

Brushstroke is a seemingly simple app that turns a photo into a painting. You might think to yourself, so what? But really, it’s a pretty powerful tool that gives teens, teachers, and librarians the chance to use a variety of effects on their photos and is a great way to start discussions on painting techniques, styles, how visual messages change as a result of visual choices, and even artists and art movements.

The way it works is that a user selects a photo from an iPad or iPhone camera roll or takes a photo from within the app. The next step is to crop the image if need be. After that, and I admit it took me a minute to figure out how to get from the crop screen to the painting screen – it’s the > on the top right (as you can see in the images below) – the image is rendered as a painting. In the photos below you’ll see the original version of the photo I painted on the left and the painted version on the right.

Once a photo is turned by Brushstroke into a painting, a wide-array of painting styles are available to render the image in. Choices range from oil and watercolor styles to experimental and abstract styles. You can also add color filters; a canvas type such as primed, rough, canvas, stone, and so on; change exposure, brightness, and add a highlights; and add a signature to a painting. When adding a signature there are a few color choices available and as the signature is created it’s visible on the painting so it’s easy to tell which color will display the best.

After completing a painting it can be saved, shared via traditional social media channels, or even produced and shipped framed and ready to hang in a school, library, or teenager’s bedroom.

Teens who are interested in different styles of art can compare their favorite artist’s paintings to the styles they create with Brushstrokes. Teachers who are working with teens in art classes, history classes, and so on can use Brushstroke as a jumping off point in conversations about the ways in which different painting techniques can be used in order to send a particular message or create a particular emotion.

Turning a photo into a painting might seem like a simple idea. But in reality, to transform the photo into the style most appropriate for the image portrayed takes a lot of thought and trial and error. Critical thinking and problem-solving are a key part of the process.

Title: 2048
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS and Android

2048 may be 2 to the eleventh power, but it’s also the name of a game I have noticed a lot of people playing lately. It’s based on a paid game, Threes!, which has won numerous game design awards, but the story behind 2048 involves a teen game developer, Gabriele Cirulli who tackled the design as a weekend project then released the game as open-source so that anyone can use the code behind it to build their own versions. You can play through a browser as well.

This game really doesn’t support STEM — the applicability of math to success is minimal. Instead, you combine the same numbers to perform the additive operation. But the real challenge is in thinking ahead and positioning your number tiles. Moving one tiles moves ALL the tiles, and the number of moves available to you are finite.

It’s easy to see how 2048 builds adopts the gaming strategies in Threes!. There are many, many knock-off versions of these games around, and much digital ink has been spilled from both amateur and professional quarters discussing strategies. There are ads in the free version, too. But for free, 2048 is an easy way to give these sorts of games a go. As Wired categorized them, these are games that are “Hard Enough to Be Played Forever.”

Have a suggestion for an App of the Week? Let us know. And check out more YALSA Apps of the Week in our archive.

Title: 2048
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS and Android

2048 may be 2 to the eleventh power, but it’s also the name of a game I have noticed a lot of people playing lately. It’s based on a paid game, Threes!, which has won numerous game design awards, but the story behind 2048 involves a teen game developer, Gabriele Cirulli who tackled the design as a weekend project then released the game as open-source so that anyone can use the code behind it to build their own versions. You can play through a browser as well.

 
This game really doesn’t support STEM — the applicability of math to success is minimal. Instead, you combine the same numbers to perform the additive operation. But the real challenge is in thinking ahead and positioning your number tiles. Moving one tiles moves ALL the tiles, and the number of moves available to you are finite.

It’s easy to see how 2048 builds adopts the gaming strategies in Threes!. There are many, many knock-off versions of these games around, and much digital ink has been spilled from both amateur and professional quarters discussing strategies. There are ads in the free version, too. But for free, 2048 is an easy way to give these sorts of games a go. As Wired categorized them, these are games that are “Hard Enough to Be Played Forever.”

Have a suggestion for an App of the Week? Let us know. And check out more YALSA Apps of the Week in our archive.

Name: Matter
Cost: $1.99
Platform: iOS

Matter is the latest photo app from Pixite, a company that has created a number of other photo apps for iOS devices. This fun app lets you add mysterious and otherworldly images to your photos with a few clicks, changing your snapshots from simple records of where you have been to stunning alien landscapes.

The app comes with four different packages of objects that can be added to your photos, for a total of 64 objects, meaning that there is almost certainly the perfect option for all of your images already included in the app. Once you have selected an object, you can drag and drop it into your desired location, change its shape, and rotate it all with the standard touchscreen motions you would use on other images. You can also style the object, changing its opacity, transparency, color, and how reflective it is to suit your needs. Detailed work, such as modifying the shadow cast by the object and masking specific portions of the object allow you to completely integrate it into your existing image so that it looks as if an alien object crashed into the original setting. Once you are happy with the look of the image, you can export a looping video of the object which can show it stationary or rotating. If you opt to have the object rotate, you can specify which axis you want it to rotate along and the speed at which it should move. The final video can be saved to your device, shared via email or text message, or uploaded to Instagram. If you want to see some examples of what users have created with Matter, check out their gallery on Instagram (or from within the app) or watch the trailer for the app.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Name:  The Photo Cookbook
Cost:  Free
Platform:  iOS

As much as I would love to offer cooking programs for teens at my library (other than the Iron Chef/Top Chef/Cupcake War-type snack challenges) I am hampered by two very important things:  the absence of kitchen appliances in our building and a complete lack of culinary ability on my part.  Thankfully, there are apps like The Photo Cookbook for me to recommend to my future Bobby Flays and Rachael Rays.

The Photo Cookbook app offers 84 recipes in four categories —  “Quick & Easy,” “Italian,” “Asian,” and “Baking” — each containing recipes for a variety of tastes and skill levels.

Click on a recipe and you’re met with a minimalist group photo of the ingredients that looks like those you’d find on popular food blogs or in your Pinterest feed, followed by a guide to how the recipe will look at each step along the way.  

The included text is straightforward and icons on the photos lead to more information about the history and culinary significance of each ingredient. Other icons allow you to create a list of favorite recipes, get nutritional information, make notes, and email shopping lists.

While in-app purchases are required to get past the “Quick & Easy” section ($2.99 for each of the other sections,) there are plenty of options with the free recipes to help a teen cook develop this very important skill.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week?  Let us know.  And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Name: Touch Van Gogh
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS and Android

Previously, Yours, Vincent has been featured as an App of the Week, but now the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has released another, equally impressive app devoted to Van Gogh’s work. Called Touch Van Gogh, this app gives users the ability to fully explore eight of Van Gogh’s famous pieces: The Cottage, View from Theo’s Apartment, The Bedroom, Seascape at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Garden of the Asylum, and Daubigny’s Garden.

For each of the images, users are encouraged to “touch” the image to learn more about it, whether this means rubbing the image to unearth more information about damage the painting had sustained, revealing side-by-side comparisons of the original color of the paint, viewing X-rays of other paintings hidden on the canvas, or even exploring the back of the canvas to see parts of the painting that are normally hidden away. In all instances, the images are gorgeous and offer the next best thing to a trip to Amsterdam to visit the paintings in person.

The app has been around for some time, even winning the 2014 Heritage In Motion Award, but recently the number of paintings included in the app was doubled, so even those who have already explored it will want to take another look. You can see the app in action in the video below:

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Title: Hyperlapse
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS 7 or later

A couple of weeks ago Instragram released its new app, Hyperlapse. What does Hyperlapse do? It enables users to shoot time-lapse videos. And, while you might have other apps on your iDevices that already do that, Hyperlapse has the added benefit of a stabalizer so that hand-held time-lapse creations actually look pretty good. Take a look at the video below to get some idea of what I mean.


The premise of Hyperlapse is simple. So too is the user interface. It’s really a point and shoot experience. You tap on the record button at the bottom of the screen to start the recording and then tap it again to stop the recording. Then you get to select the speed of the video you want to use – and preview the video in each speed. The default Hyperlapse speed is 6X the normal video speed and the app provides options for from 1X to 12X the actual speed. As the Hyperlapse support page states, “A 6x speed means that your Hyperlapse video will be 6 times faster than its original recording. For example, a 60-second video at 6x would end up being 10 seconds long after it’s sped up.”

When satisfied with your video and speed to save it to the device camera roll you tap on the check mark in the top right of the screen. Once saved you have the option to share on Facebook or Instagram or you can share the video as you would any image in your device camera roll. If you aren’t happy with your video and it’s time to start again you tap on the red X in the top left.

How might you use Hyperlapse for and with teens? Of course you would want to ask them what they would be interested in doing with the app. But, an idea to get that conversation started might be to have teens host a time-lapse video contest. Maybe teens who are interested in photography and/or video creation would like to have a local photographer or video developer come in and talk about what makes time-lapse compelling and why Hyperlapse is a good tool to use. Or, maybe teens would be interested in creating Hyperlapse videos of a typical event that they take part in every day – getting to school from home, walking down the hall of their school, hanging out in a store or coffee shop, and so on. What do they notice in a time-lapse video compared to what they notice when they are taking part in the event in real time?

Teachers might also find using Hyperlapse with students something they want to consider. As a matter of fact there are several articles on that topic already. For example, 9 Ways to User Hyperlapse in your School’s Video Efforts This Year The simplicity of Hyperlapse makes it a good app to show those who aren’t comfortable with technology or using apps and devices in educational settings.

As many reviewers of Hyperlapse have stated, the stabilization feature of the app makes it possible to create high quality hand-held time-lapse videos without extra equipment. Check out some posts at Mashable for inspiration on how it might be used with and for teens in your library.

• Musicians Test Hyperlapse for their Time-Lapse Videos
• 20 Creative Hyperlapses From Instagrams New App

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Title: Learnist
Cost: Free, with some premium boards as in-app purchases
Platform: iOS and Android

Learnist offers bite-sized learning, ranging from to academic topics to pop culture, with lots of food and DIY step-by-steps to mix things up.

There are a lot of these user-generated learning platforms around, many with big name content tie-ins. Learnist is like Instructables, but with a better user interface, or Curious, but with more free content.

You do have to sign up for an account and verify your email to get started. It’s an altogether pleasant experience, swiping through the stages or steps of a learnist “lesson.” It works well on a smaller screen, and is ideal for browsing on horizontally-oriented tablets. To discover boards, you can browse recommendations, hyperlink to other board by particular experts, or explore boards by category.

You can follow a particular Learnist expert (and some big players, including BBC and Discovery, are using Learnist to puh content), save a Learnist topic to your reading list, share each Learning using social networking.

I’m really excited about using Learnist as a publishing platform. For me, it’s an ideal way for visually-oriented students to share their learning. It’s easy to create a board, thereby becoming a “content expert.” Each board is populated with the “learnings” displayed in the collapsed menu. The Learnist board creation platform (limited to computer interface now) makes nesting citations, adding images, linking to webpages easy.

I could also see this really taking off among librarians looking for programming and display “how-tos” beyond a Pinterest pin, or for teachers as a way to share lesson plans, too.

Access to premium boards seems to cost a consistent $1. You can pay to learn how “to thrive” from
Arianna Huffington, which is a little ironic that someone who famously doesn’t feel the need to pay contributors is asking for cash for her own work.

These were the top paid boards as of a few weeks ago. Note how many are by celebrities:

1. Kari Byron’s 11 Science Experiments To Do With Your Kids board
2. Gus Van Sant’s Creativity in Filmmaking and the Arts
3. Brad Meltzer’s How To Get Your Book Published board
4. Arianna Huffington Teaches Us to THRIVE!
5. Danny Forster’s 10 Architecture Lessons You Won’t Get In School
6. Olivia Wilde’s The Women I’ve Learned The Most From board

I defy you not to find something in Learnist that you want to know more about…

There are lots more great apps in our App of the Week Archive, and if you want to suggest an app, let us know!

App: Heyday
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS (with Android coming soon)

Have you ever wished that you kept a journal, but not been able to find the time? Want to track everything you do without announcing it to everyone you know? If so, Heyday is the app for you. This journaling app automates the process of tracking what you do each day while keeping all of the information private.

To get started with the app, you are asked to give it access to both the media library and the location data on your device. Heyday automatically compiles this information to create an entry for each day that data is collected on your device. Photos (and videos) that are pulled into the app are automatically made into a collage.

Though the app will work without any input, you can also customize each day’s entry by adding notes, rearranging the images, or adding additional location information. If you want, you can also change which images are included in the journal and how they are arranged in the day’s collage. Fans of Instagram and similar photo apps will be happy to know that you can also add separate filters to each of the images, which allows you to display your photos to their best effect. If you are particularly happy with one day’s collage, you can also share it to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, or send it via email or text message from within the app. Alternatively, you can also save collages to your device’s media library, making it easy to use them in other apps or simply view them outside of the app.

Heyday truly makes daily journal entries as easy as possible. As an added feature, the app offers the option to create an account, which allows Heyday to automatically sync your journal with the cloud periodically so that you have a backup if anything happens to your device. However, even if you would prefer not to create an account or share your content outside of your device, you can use all of the features. Heyday is a great option for those who want to journal in theory but never manage to in practice.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Title:  Party Party
Platforms:  iOS
Cost:  $.99

If you’re anything like me, you probably have so many photography apps that you sometimes call your phone a camera by mistake.  The trouble with such a bounty is that each app usually offers a singular use or function, forcing you to thumb through all the options for each photo op.

The Party Party app cuts through some of that cumbersome decision-making by offering an easy way to take and edit single photos, or take sequential photos that can be formatted as a photo booth collage or stitched together to create stop-motion animations.  In essence, you get three apps in one.

The interface is bright, playful, and intuitive, opening to a photo capture screen with minimal and clearly defined icons:  toggle the lightning bolt for flash, change the orientation of the camera, select the number of photos you want in your sequence (1, 4, 9, or 16), select the gear icon for further options, or hit the shutter button to begin.

The camera then takes the selected number of photos with a couple of seconds lag time between each — long enough to change facial expressions or move the star of your stop-motion project.  If the product isn’t to your liking, selecting the gear icon allows you to change the amount of delay between pictures in the sequence or choose Manual mode to set up shots without being rushed.

Once satisfied with your photos, you can move to the Layouts page to choose how fast you’d like your animation to run (from turtle to rabbit) or choose the style of your photo booth collage.  Next, a basic photo editor allows you to apply filters and adjust brightness and contrast before exporting your creation as a photo, video, or GIF to social media sites or your camera roll.

The ability to import photos and opt out of the automatic looping that occurs with the animations might make this party a bit more fun.  Still, Party Party will appeal to teens looking to enhance their Instagram experience and offer those of us who program for them lots of options with one icon on our homescreen.

Name: ScratchJr
Platform: iOS 7 or later/compatible with iPad
Cost: Free

OK, I know some of you are saying, “Wait, I thought this was the YALSAblog for those working with teens. What’s up with a review of an app that’s for really young kids?” It seems crazy that the YALSAblog App of the week would review something like ScratchJr, but I have to say, there’s a lot to make it worth recommending to staff working with teens and to teens themselves.

• ScratchJr is a perfect way for any adult – library staff member, parent, teacher, etc. – to start learning about why all of this talk about teaching young people how to code is important, to begin to understand what block-based coding is all about, and to be able to gain some skills so to be better prepared for STEM-based programs that might be rolled out that integrate critical thinking, problem-solving, etc. within a coding environment.
• Any library that is giving teens the chance to work with younger children on coding projects will want to know about ScratchJr. It’s a perfect app for teens to use with kids to get the younger kids started on learning how coding works and on STEM-based activities that integrate critical thinking and problem-solving. If the teens you work with are working on this kind of project, it’s also a perfect opportunity for teens to have a chance to talk and think about how to present the information to children, how to plan and implement a program of this kind, and so on. It will take a lot of critical thinking and problem-solving on a teen’s part to put together a ScratchJr program for younger children, and that’s great.

When you get started with ScratchJr you’ll need to start a new project. As with all Scratch software and apps, the new project starts with a cat as the main character of the story, or game, or activity you are going to program. And, as with all Scratch programs you can change that character and/or add more characters to the project you work on.

What ScratchJr and other programs of the same type is all about is learning how to program by creating a process that tells the cat – or other character that you use – to move in a certain way, say something, stop and pause for a period of time, and so on. The focus is on learning how the commands you put together have an impact on what’s going on on the screen.

ScratchJr doesn’t have as many commands to work with as it’s parent product Scratch, but it has plenty to get started with for those who are learning how to program in this way. Users can move characters in all directions, have the character speak, record narration, hide and show characters and more. Users can also add backgrounds and change the look of a character using some simple character editing tools.

Any adult that is wondering what this coding thing that people are talking about as a part of learning for children and teens is all about, should try out ScratchJr as a first step in their own learning. Teens working to help younger kids will do well learning ScratchJr as well. It’s worth the time to take a look and think about how ScratchJr does have an impact on the teens and the families that you work with.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Name: Leafsnap
Platform: iOS
Cost: Free

Leafsnap has languished for years on my phone. The app represents the sort of big audacious online project that we as librarians need to know about. Merging geographic location with image recognition, it combines reports from the field to produce an interactive electronic guide.

For the end user, Leafsnap is designed to make a “best guess” about the species of a plant, based on an image of a leaf you upload or input through the camera. I hadn’t been able to use it before last week. It’s limitation? Spearheaded by the Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution, Leafsnap is crowd-sourced, and a caveat warns that the database best reflects the northeasten U.S. for the time being (though there is a U.K. version, too). When I heard someone speculating about the name of a specific tree while I was in Massachusetts, I was happy to put the tool to work.

One word on technique: I had better success when I photographed and cropped around a leaf beforehand, and you will need a “true white” background — the reverse side of an index card works fine. The app converts your image into an “x ray” of the leaf, queries the database and returns with a series of options, all of which contain Leafsnaps as well as more holistic images of matching plants.

Using the apps involves creating an account in Leafsnap’s user-driven botanical database to track your scanning and positive identifications. Inside the app, you’re creating your own log book, marking each species with a swipe, with a geographic distribution as well.

The process of collecting and marking specimens can be addictive; even your most tender-hearted teen will respect the do-no-harm approach to nature the app represents. Within the database, the specimens link to the Encyclopedia of Life, another ambitious, crowd-sourced online project, and there’s an integrated program designed to improve your recognition skills.

It only occurred to me after the fact that leafsnap enables a twenty-first century manifestation of the very nineteenth century impulse for classification among amateur botanists. For contrast, you can see a digitized version of Emily Dickinson’s old school herbarium here.

Leafsnap offers a fun, mobile way to involve the natural world in your summer STEM programming. And while the geographic scope of the database might seem to limit its utility, I’ve found that it works just fine beyond the specified region.

Have a suggestion for App of the Week? Let us know. And find more great Apps in the YALSA Blog’s App of the Week Archive.

Title:  Loop
Cost:  $0.99
Platform:  iOS

As a teen, most of my notebooks were full of stick-figure flip animations performing stunts on the page edges.   Loop is the digital equivalent of those over-doodled notebooks, allowing users to create hand-drawn, animated loops that can be exported as GIFs.

The app’s interface gives much of its screen space to a whiteboard-like drawing area with a grid of tools permanently situated at the lower edge.

The basic tools include three brushes in black, red, and blue that vary in width from ballpoint to brush depending on the speed in which a finger or stylus is used. There’s also an eraser for fixing mistakes (no “Undo” button, sadly) and a button that duplicates one frame at a time.

The toolkit’s superstars are the “Onion Skin” button, which shows a ghost of the previous frame in order to more accurately place the next, and the “Guide Video” buttons that allow users to access videos recorded on the device to use as guides for more fluid animations. These tools help take creations to a new level and introduce users to concepts they’ll need to know if they want to do more than dabble in animation.

Once finished, the loops can easily be exported as GIFs via email, the Loop Gallery (shown below) and Tumblr.

Everything about Loop is bare-bones, including the support (don’t expect much from that “Help” button) but as I recall the best part of drawing flip books was the trial and error involved in getting my stick figures from point A to point B.  In this and other aspects, Loop replicates that feeling of doing something awesome with very little skill.

For more YALSA App of the Week posts, visit the App of the Week Archive.

App: OKDOTHIS
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS

The new photography app OKDOTHIS aims to be a different sort of image app. By its own terms it is “a Community that encourages growth and inspires us all to DO more” rather than a simple app. To emphasize that idea of community, the first step after you create an account in the app is to add friends. You can choose to find these friends through your device’s contacts, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram or you can instead search for people or accept some of the suggestions provided by the app.

Once you have completed that step (or opted out of it), you are thrown right into the app. You will see a screen that says “Try this DO,” which offers a task posted by another user to inspire a specific type of photo. For example, as you can see below, the first suggested activity that I saw was to take a picture of my shoes. At this point, you can either scroll through photos taken by other users or click on the “Do This” button to take your own picture. When completing suggested tasks, you also have the option to use a photo that is already in your device’s image library.

Because this is an app focused on photography, you are given many options to optimize your shots. You can select what image ratio you would like to display from seven available options and you can then crop the image, add a filter or alter the tone in a variety of ways. Once you are happy with your image, you can post it under the task that it fulfills with a short answer to the question “What’s the story behind this photo?” By default images will be published to the photo feed and available for download, but users can also opt out of either of these when posting. If you choose to connect the app to your social media accounts, you can also have the image posted directly to either Facebook or Twitter.

Beyond taking photos based on prompts, you can also start with an image and then attach a “do” to it. If you take this approach, you can finish editing the image before writing your own “do”, searching for an existing one, choosing from those that you already have, or choosing from among those that you have previously bookmarked. You can also opt to upload the photo without attaching it to a “do.” If you would prefer, you can also create your own “do”, which can be either made public or kept private.

As a fundamentally social app, OKDOTHIS relies on users to post activities; but it also relies on them to create the optimal experience. If you don’t have many followers, you won’t see much activity in your feed, but you can still seek both photos and activities out through the search feature, which offers the option to browse categories, search for activities, photos or people, or find the “DO of the day”.

OKDOTHIS is a nice twist on photography apps, particularly for those who struggle to find inspiration for their images. I think it will be particularly perfect for those who want to begin taking more creative and artistic photos, but just don’t know where to start. By offering prompts and examples of high-quality images, OKDOTHIS is sure to improve your own photos while keeping you engaged in the process.

App: Pocket Avatar
Cost: Free
Platform: Android and iOS

Although Intel might not seem like a company that is focused on fun and entertaining apps, they recently released an iOS app that could change this perception. Pocket Avatar detects a user’s facial expressions and maps them onto a personalized avatar.

Getting started with Pocket Avatar requires that you create an account, but once you have, the process of making your video avatar is fairly easy. You can choose from a wide variety of characters, including over twenty that are free. The paid characters are generally $.99 and include pop culture icons such as a Care Bear and Lego Movie characters. Once you have selected and downloaded your chosen avatar, you can start recording. Pocket Avatar can record from either camera on your iPhone, making it simple to create an avatar for yourself or for a friend. Before you start recording, you will have to line up the face to be recorded in a field on your screen. You can then record up to 15 seconds of both video and audio. Rather than recording your actual face and voice, Pocket Avatar maps the expressions you make onto your selected avatar and masks your voice by making it deeper. Once you have finished recording, you can opt to either eliminate the sound completely or swap to a high-pitched version of your voice. At this point, you can also change the avatar to any other character in the app.

Finished avatars can be named and then shared via text message, email or Twitter. The results are a fun mix of the user’s own facial expressions and a cartoon character. I found that the facial recognition worked fairly well and I expect that it will improve over time. This app will appeal to Twitter users and those who frequently send text messages. If you fall into one of these categories, you should check it out!

Title: Cargo-Bot
Platforms: iOS
Cost: Free

Learning to code is a big topic of conversation these days with a lot of discussion about the importance of teaching young people coding and programming skills. Why is this such a big topic of conversation? Because when anyone learns to code/program they have the chance to spend time critically thinking, problem solving, and troubleshooting. All important skills to have in the 21st century.

Acquiring these skills is definitely a part of Cargo-Bot, an app that uses game-play to teach the ideas behind coding and programming. Playing Cargo-Bot requires programming each game in order to achieve a a particular goal. All goals require moving boxes of cargo across or down the screen. And, while the first goals are pretty simple it doesn’t take too long for the game to become more complex and require that players think about not just left, right, up, and down but the order of those moves, looping moves, and specifying when and when not to actually make a move.

You can see how it all works in the screencast below.

Cargo-Bot is a great app for teens and library staff that are interested in learning about the basic type of thinking required in order to start programming. Anyone who plays won’t end up creating an app or website, but they will end up with a good sense of computational thinking and the kinds of things required to program and instruct a computer or device how to achieve specific goals.

Have a suggestion for the YALSA App of the Week? Let us know. And check out past Apps of the Week in the Archive.