new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: digital content, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 6 of 6
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: digital content in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
By: ALSC Children and Technology committee,
on 3/12/2016
Blog:
ALSC Blog
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Books,
Uncategorized,
Committees,
Students,
eBooks,
Collaboration,
News of Interest,
Digital World,
apps,
Projects & Research,
digital content,
Children & Technology,
Blogger Children and Technology Committee,
eReaders/eBooks,
open eBooks,
children & technology committee,
Add a tag
Image from http://openebooks.net/
Last month a huge step toward getting every child in America access to amazing books was taken with the official launch of Open eBooks! The White House announced the news to the excitement of librarians, educators and families across the United States on February 24th. Open eBooks is part of the White House ConnectED Initiative which aims to increase access to digital resources as a component of enriching K-12 education. You can read the official press release here.
The project is made possible through a partnership with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the New York Public Library, Baker and Taylor, First Book, and made possible by generous commitments of publishers with funding support provided in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. What a great example of many institutions coming together for a greater cause!
The Open eBooks app is now available for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. This app provides access to thousands of free eBooks, including many award-winning and popular titles, to youth in low-income communities via their smartphone or tablet. The app not only provides access to children across the country, but also provides access to children on military bases! To get access to the app youth, or an adult working with them, can download the app and enter credentials provided by a person registered with First Book to enable access to the eBooks.
So how do you get access? If you work at a library that serves at least 70% of children from low-income families, and your library hosts a program specifically focused on supporting these youth, you may register with First Book here. Eligibility can be determined by a variety of factors, including the E-Rate of your library or Title I eligibility of the neighborhood school. After you are registered, you can request access codes for Open eBooks through First Book, whose Marketplace is the eBook distributor for the project. You can request as many codes as you would like for each collection of Open eBooks. Once you have your codes, you can distribute the codes to the children or caregivers to use with the Open eBook app on their personal devices.
Image from http://bit.ly/1RUZy0q
Some great features include the ability to read without checkouts or holds, which makes access to reading materials even easier for users. Youth can borrow up to 10 books at a time and replace each book with a new book as many times as they’d like.
Did you know that you can help choose the next round of eBooks for Open eBooks? The DPLA Curation Corps is a group of librarians and other information professionals who help coordinate books for inclusion in the program. The DPLA is currently accepting applications to for the second class of Curation Corps members! You can find more information about getting involved and how to apply here. The deadline to apply is April 1st!
The goal of Open eBooks is to grow a love of reading and hopefully encourage children to read more often, either through using their local library, at school, or by using another eBook reading app. Even if you won’t have the ability to distribute codes at your library, you can still spread the great news and help to make your community aware of this awesome project. I can’t wait to see this program grow and expand!
_____________________________________________________
Nicole Lee Martin is a Children’s Librarian at the Rocky River Public Library in Rocky River, OH and is writing this post for the Children and Technology Committee. You can reach her at [email protected].
The post Opening Digital Doors with Open eBooks appeared first on ALSC Blog.
I am excited to see the publication of two milestones for those interested in bringing digital literacy in to the library for kids and families.
One is the publication of the full
Young Children,New Media, and Libraries:A Guide for Incorporating New Media into Library Collections, Services, and Programs for Families and Children Ages 0-5. This book has been written as an online serial over the past year or so by some of the true movers, shakers and thinkers on this issue in the nation. It can be downloaded or accessed online.
The second is ALSC's new White Paper on
Media Mentorship in Libraries Serving Youth. This paper was adopted by the ALSC board in March and is now available for downloading. It is a straightforward, well-reasoned, well- researched and helpful guide that places libraries and librarians squarely in a digital literacy role we so beautifully performed with print and nonprint literacy over the years. It is a
vailable on page chuck full of information on the many ways libraries are working on media mentorship.
While some see attention to digital literacy and evolving our roles in libraries to include being media mentors as THE.DEATH.OF.LOVE.OF.BOOKS.AS.WE.KNOW.IT, I remain remarkably sanguine.
Could be I've seen four decades of growth, evolution and radical change in libraries since the heady days of the 1970s. Could be I think that Ranganathan's Fifth Law posited in 1931 (The Library is a growing organism) is actually true. Could be that transliteracy and the remarkable resiliency of libraries to meet the community's needs trump any fear we might have of change. Could be I just like change.
Whatever.
I welcome the great work being done nationally, regionally and locally to embrace digital literacy and media mentorship and applaud everyone who is stepping up and on. Go you's!!!
Need more ways to polish up your thoughts and planning on technology and kids.
You can start with the ongoing online chapter-by-chapter publication of
Young Children, New Media and Libraries in
Little elit, and reading this blog for ideas on using ipads in programming, seminal thoughts on librarians as media mentors and much more.
You can attend this nifty LITA (Library Information and Technology Association of ALA) webinar
Technology and Youth Services Programs: Early Literacy Apps and More in May with Claire Moore of Darien CT Library.
You can stay updated on libraries that have been using ipads in-house at blogs like
Reading with Red.
And now we're thinking about the nifty and new to the market
Launchpads.
There's a world of things to discover! Let's do this!!
I love technology even when I'm less than facile with it. Having come from the horse and buggy days when overdue notices were handwritten, check-out cards (by the thousands) were hand alphabetized for each due date and slowly searched to unite card with returned item, and phone notices ate up a morning each week, how can I not love?
Back in the day, to reach out to your colleagues meant a drive or a long-distance phone call. It wasn't unusual for a director, sweating the bottom line, to ask you to use snail mail. Not exactly conducive to a conversation.
Technology has been powering our work and connectivity since the '80s. Each year it gets better, faster and more interwoven. Social media gets us brainstorming, learning, commiserating and celebrating with pals, new and old, near and far. Travis Jonker just wrote
this article on power-using. Combine that with chats, google doc collaboration and we can be right there with each other all the time. I'm with you, buddy!
Bringing technology into our work with kids has also been great. Watching parents using iPads with their kids, kids gaming and solving in Minecraft, kids learning animation, coding, filmmaking, using iPads for trivia/scavenger hunts on tours and more in libraries (check out
Jbrary's recent post on iPad programs) has been way exciting. I will never be the Luddite that screams "Books! Books! Nothin' but books!" There is room for all the ways to interact with print and discover and learn information.
So where is all this going? Well with new iPhone I bought last night in hand, for the first time I am free to blog wherever and whenever. So I did, just to see if I could!
Sigh! Technology I heart you!
[Although I couldn't *quite* figure out how to get the links and photo in...more study ahead!)
Looking for ALA Annual programs on apps for kids? ALSC will be hosting two educational programs on apps – “The Apps are All Right! Exploring the Role of Apps in Children’s and Teen Services” and “Whet Your APPetite: Rapid Reviews of Apps for Children from Preschool to Tweens”, which will take place at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference.
The Apps are All Right! program is scheduled for Saturday, June 28, 2014, 8:30 – 10:00am PT in Room S230 of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Designed as a primer for children’s and teen librarians, this program will offer a dynamic overview of the place of the app as a new format within the library profession. Four panelists will provide relevant research and examples from practice with diverse populations of children and teens. Participants will also be invited to explore the continuously evolving rationale for strengthening the role of the children’s and teen librarian in app recommendation for the communities libraries serve.
The Whet Your APPetite program is scheduled for Sunday, June 29, 2014, 1:00 – 2:30pm PT in Pavilion 11 of the Las Vegas Hotel. This program will showcase some new and favorite apps selected by ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee and Digital Content Task Force. A variety of app recommendations will be paired with ideas for how to use them with children in your library.
It has been a rambunctious few weeks on the
alsc-l listserv and then followed up on the ALSC blog. What is ruffling feathers and raising tempers? The basic question of how we as youth librarians incorporate and curate digital content for kids - including very young kids.
A simple request to share thoughts with an app developer passed on to the listserv by Cen Campbell over at
Little eLit blog elicited more action than I've seen on alscl in a while. Some people got quite off topic with flame-worthy insistence that digital content had no place in the library lives of kids between 0-5. The ALSC blog guest posts followed -
here,
here and
here.
I never weighed in on this brouhaha except in comments. I will tell you, though, I was dismayed at some of the attitudes displayed and the arguments made against including digital content for young kids. Although we haven't made much of a leap at our library, it is a direction I expect our team will be going much sooner rather than later. Again, Cen pointed the way in her
Wrestling Your Bear post at the beginning of November. That coupled with the provocative thinking in the
Libraries and Transliteracy blog (now finished) really informed my thinking.
Cen's thoughts dovetail with mine. This semester I have been teaching a graduate level Children's and YA Services course for UW-Madison. One of our textbooks, Adele Fasick's
From Boardbook to Facebook, published in 2011, makes the case for the direction youth libraries will inevitably be moving in. It's a direction that seamlessly blends traditional print with digital content to meet the needs of our families. I would be remiss as an instructor - and as a practicing librarian - not to look further and more deeply into the future that is truly happening right now. My students need to be open to the possibilities they will experience at the beginning - as well as at the end - of their careers.
While I appreciate the hesitation and worry about screen time expressed by people, I also think it is incredibly short-sighted and darn near dereliction of duty not to stand-up, research-up, read-up, learn-up, understand-up AND change-up for positive support and curation of digital content for kids. Arguing as Luddites that screens time is a no-no below a certain age ignores the rich (and sometimes stupid and banal) content that parents are tapping into already. As youth librarians we need to understand and lead, model and recommend to help our families find the best for their kids.
I hope people stop thinking of why not and start thinking of why and how. We serve our communities best when we add to our knowledge base, bridge the divides - and change and evolve with the times. By learning from and collaborating with each other we all gain.
Image: 'Canyon do Buracão' http://www.flickr.com/photos/58817442@N00/352819555 Found on flickrcc.net
I guess my feeling on this is simply - no time. I have lists of additional programming/outreach projects; the special education school, the Hispanic population, Headstart, the elementary school outside of town, the teens and middle schoolers with nowhere to go after school. But, I also do 3-4 programs a week, collection development, outreach, marketing (including social media), fundraising, and staff the children's and general information desk for our service population of 24,000. Our attendance and circulation keep going up and I have more people ask for VHS than for ipads. So, while I'm sure there are people who would appreciate digital reference and programming elements, it's not a sector of our population I have time to put together and market programming for right now and it's really not a priority for me. One thing I see missing in these discussions is what I always consider the bedrock of programming: Consider your community. Do you have a community that's heavily digital? Are the parents showing up at storytimes with ipads, tablets and smartphones? Are you getting asked for advice on apps? Is it a big enough part of your community that they need services and what services are you going to cancel/scale back on in order to offer these new programs/elements of programming, including the fundraising to support them? Rather than dividing into "Everybody Must Go Digital!" or "OMG No Digital EVER" camps, I think we should consider it like any other service or program - some communities need it, some communities don't (at least right now) and librarians have to choose how they're going to spend their limited time and resources. Doesn't mean you can't keep up with the research of course!
Oh, and agree on the no-screen thing. I personally would rather see kids playing outside and never seeing an electronic device until they're at least five, but I do not run a Waldorf School - I run a children's department in a public library. I have to balance what people want and need and if that's Baby Einstein and tons of pink princess...er...stuff, so be it. That's not to say I can't try to educate people and show them healthy alternatives, but ultimately I serve the wants and needs of my population not what I think they should need.
While I understand your concern about how much you have to do and is this a justifiable use of time, digital content and use is becoming ever more pervasive. In our community, even our parents in the lowest socio-economic bracket have smart phones and share apps with kids. Libraries have curated content and recommended excellence in print and non-print resources (awards; reviews; displays; promotion of books and non-book material, etc) since forever. Making this leap is easier than we are making it. And if libraries decide this is a hill too high to climb, our parents will pass us by and rely on recommendations from the oddest spots.
Well said, Marge. <3
Hey, do you know of resources on simple/easy/non-time-consuming ways to include more technology? Or maybe some things you're doing at your library? A lot of the things I've looked at seem to be aimed at wide-sweeping changes to storytime structure, or lots of online involvement etc. but some small things...that would be doable!
Check out Perrot Library in CT; Bryce Don't Play blog. We use flip cameras; podcasting; animation programs with school age kids. I think just the process of highlighting great apps for kids (reviewed in SLJ and blogs) like Pete the Cat; Press Here; Freight Train and etc goes a long way towards content curation that we do all the time with print. All efforts start with a first small step...and an eye to what other libraries are doing and a willingness to explore ground they have broken to make our walk easier!
Thanks! Hmmm, I see a fun display in our future!
I could not agree with you more, Marge. The world we live in today in becoming increasingly digital and we need to teach kids how to navigate that world. Bringing technology into the library not only prepares kids for the world they live in, but it also give us a chance to teach parents (and kids) about good digital sources (AWE Learning stations, Tumblebooks, and the like) and not so good ones. Library budgets can hinder this effort, but I can see within the next few years, the prices of e-readers/tablets and other such technology going down, making them more of a possibility for library YS departments. Thanks for another engaging post, as usual.