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Downloadable and streaming audiobooks have been on my mind again.  Recently, some articles came out about the benefits of audiobooks for literacy; a revelation that probably surprised few of us in children’s and school library services.  We did not create the Odyssey awards for nothing.  ALA Editions published a wonderful book about it by Sharon Grover and Lizette D. Hannegan “back” in 2012.  Last year, Rachel Wood from Arlington Public Library wrote an ALSC Blog post that stands as a primer for building an e-audio collection.  But it always feels like a topic needs to come around a few times before the greater profession and the greater public latches on.

Perhaps it is not always content that is the way to hook a reluctant reader but format too.  Dan Cohen from the DPLA wrote an article for The Atlantic talking about the powerful role that smartphones play in the lives of today’s teens and how this may be a way to bridge the digital divide.  One of my own young relatives revealed to me that because she has difficulty reading, she uses audiobooks to keep up with her English class assignments.  She finds and streams audiobook editions of assigned books on her smartphone.  Recognizing that most parents and caregivers have smartphones, many libraries, like Spokane County Library District, are emphasizing their media mentor skills to recommend downloadable and streaming audiobooks and related apps for them to use with their children.

In the past, a former children’s librarian could feel alone in the greater e-content world.  Too often children were not considered during e-content discussions.   (Besides my fellow children’s librarians, who else at a meeting would excitedly prattle on about an audiobook of Winnie the Pooh in which Judy Dench gives voice to Kanga.) Now, we live in a world of Bookflix, Tumblebooks, and Overdrive Read-alongs.  When children’s e-material did not circulate well during the early years of e-content platforms, I still believed it was worth building a collection.  I knew at some point, this part of the market would grow.  And, with the growth in downloadable audiobook circulation and sales, the time is upon us.

Let’s admit.  Unlike a book, a physical audiobook can be clumsy (yes I know, for some downloading from the library can be clumsy as well).  I tried the entire carry ten discs onto the subway thing when I had longer commutes, and yes, I did miss a few stops because of a wonderful narrator.  As well, technology has changed so rapidly as concerns personal electronics.  A few months ago, a member of an audiobook award committee told me she had a hard time finding a store near her that still sold Discmans (she wanted one so she could listen for her committee while she went on her walks).  In the age of tablets, smartphones, and smartwatches, I think more focus needs to be on downloadable and streaming e-content.

To paraphrase Ranganathan: every young listener, their downloadable audiobook, and every downloadable audiobook, its young listener.

Michael Santangelo is the Electronic Resources Coordinator for BookOps, the shared technical services department for the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library, and the current chair of ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee.

The post Encouraging young listeners with downloadable and streaming audiobooks appeared first on ALSC Blog.

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.

This article will focus on using Google Hangouts on Air.

We’d all love to have our favorite author fly out and visit us in person, but the cost and logistics can be daunting. Streaming visits allow authors to connect with more readers and are easier on your budget- sometimes your author will even speak for free! Here are a few tips that will help ensure your event is a success.

Why Google Hangouts on Air?
Setting up a YouTube channel to associate your Hangout with will automatically archive your event to YouTube.  No problem that you weren’t able to get all the kids in one room at a time, they can watch later. See the King County Library System’s Hangout page for examples of past events.  Creating a new YouTube channel will automatically create your Google+ page for you. Alternatively, if you have a channel you can associate it with a Google+ page. You will need to verify your channel through SMS.

Technical Run Through
Set up a practice session with you author at least a week prior. Send them the link to Google Hangouts so they have the most current version installed. This also gives you a chance to chat with the author and figure out the flow of your event.

Equipment Set Up
You’ll need a webcam so the author can see who they are talking to, possibly a tripod to set it up on, a microphone for questions, and speakers so everyone can hear. For streaming events this is where you may incur some costs, but you only need to purchase these items once!

Hangout Settings
Hover at the top of the page to access your settings. Check that your microphone and speakers are selected and test your sound. You may need to change your main preferences through your Control Panel.

Inviting Participants
We’ve found the least stressful method is to click the person + icon at the top of the page.

Copy the permanent link and email the link to your author. Please note that if you send the invite through email your author will need to login to Gmail or Hangouts to see the invitation.

Starting the Hangout
After you invite your participants you aren’t broadcasting yet. To get your archived video you need to click the Start Broadcast button. When you are finished (yay!) click End Broadcast. YouTube will need to finish processing your event, but it should be finished in a few hours.

Final Tips
Don’t panic if people look reversed during the Hangout. During the processing everything will be flipped and anyone watching remotely will see everything correctly.

Concerned about recording student faces? Make your videos Unlisted and only share the URL with staff and parents.

Help Resources
How to Dominate Google+ Hangouts on Air
Hangouts On Air common questions

The post Best Practices for a Streaming Author Visit appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Autumn has arrived here in Northeastern Ohio, bringing with it crisp weather, all things pumpkin, and beautiful fall foliage. The trees are only starting to reveal their brilliant hues of orange, yellow, gold and red here, but soon I’ll awaken to a glowing landscape that seemingly exploded overnight. As this season traditionally brings many requests for fall themed library materials, as well as special fall programming, I was inspired to think of ways that technology may add further enjoyment and educational opportunities to this time.

The best way to experience the beauty of fall is to strap on your hiking shoes and venture to the nearest wooded park (or your backyard!). Bringing along your smartphone or tablet, loaded with fall foliage apps, can enhance your exploration of autumn’s beauty. Children of a variety of ages will enjoy learning more about our natural environment with these  apps and websites highlighted below, although most young users not yet in elementary school may need some parent or caregiver help.

• Yankee Leaf Peepr– This free app by Yankee Publishing Inc., available for Apple and Android devices, provides you with a very handy color-coded map that indicates where the leaves are changing anywhere in the United States. Users contribute to the map by posting photos and ratings of the foliage, making this app not only useful, but
  
  

  Image from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ypi.leafpeepr&hl=en.

  
  interactive. The current foliage color is determined by averaging user ratings in a geographic area.
• Chimani apps- These apps, offered as free downloads on all major mobile platforms,  are a really fun way to explore various National Parks. They help you with planning your trip, letting you know when Ranger-led trips occur, and more. These apps work with or without WiFi or a data signal, which is especially helpful when you are out on the trail.
• LeafSnap– Once you’ve found some beautiful leaves, you may be left wondering what kind of tree they’re a part of. Make this a great learning opportunity with LeafSnap! Developed by researchers at Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institute, LeafSnap helps users identify trees by allowing users to take a picture of a leaf from the tree and then providing them with the species. The app is free for iPhone and iPad, and also has a website displaying tree species. The only negative is that this is only usable for species found in the Northeastern United States and Canada.
• U.S. Forest Service website and Yonder app–  The U.S. Forest Service has partnered with Yonder, a free app, to help nature lovers share their adventures. The website also provides a map of fall color based on eyewitness accounts and allows users to choose their state or local forest to see specific fall foliage information. You can find weekly color updates in your state using this tool!
• Foliage Network – The fall foliage prediction map on this website helps users visual the changing leaves around the United States and plan when to see the most beautiful colors in your neighborhood.

You can pair these fun apps and websites with traditional activities for a great autumn library program. How about leaf rubbing (which was recently discussed here on the blog), sharing a classic fall read-aloud such as Ehlert’s “Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf” and then using LeafSnap to identify the tree outside the storytime window? There are many possibilities to incorporate technology and nature into library programs and family time. What are some of your favorite hi- or low-tech autumn extension activities? ___________________________________________________________

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 Exploring Autumn with Apps and Websites appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Homework with iPad (Source: ND Strupler)

As the new school year gets underway, parents and teachers will inevitably look to us for advice about how to help their students take advantage of the many digital resources available to assist with studying, research, and homework. This can seem a daunting task for anyone, but as mentors of digital media, library staff should strive to stay on top of recent developments in educational technology so that we can guide families to the apps, websites, and services that will best fit their needs. Luckily, we aren’t alone in the search for quality apps and websites, as many aids exist to help evaluate, review, and recommend digital resources in this area.

(Source: AASL)

Every year, AASL releases its lists of Best Websites for Teaching and Learning and Best Apps for Teaching and Learning, identifying resources that “foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration.” Each year’s list is broken down into helpful categories, and the “Past Lists” links lead to sortable spreadsheets of all the apps or sites that have been recognized. The 2015 lists were released at the end of June, and offer some great up-to-date information to share with teachers and families.

appoLearning recently released a Collections feature, which allows educators to build and share customized lists of apps and websites for specific topics or lessons. appoLearning’s searchable database returns custom collections from users, as well as expert-reviewed resources pertaining to the same topics.

Don’t forget to promote the digital resources offered by your library, too! Many reference database providers have created specialized apps to give patrons quick access to their products both in and out of the library. Gale’s Access My Library (iOS and Android, free) and EBSCOhost’s mobile apps (iOS and Android, free) are some examples of these custom apps. If you’re not sure which of your database vendors provide apps for patron access, take some time to check, and be sure to download and explore the apps yourself.

Digital resources can also be incredibly valuable for special needs students, helping them access information, build skills, and organize and manage time and tasks. Smart Apps for Special Needs reviews apps that can help special needs students in many areas of their lives. ADDitude Magazine also frequently creates lists of apps for both children and adults with ADD or ADHD, available on their website.

Other sites to check out:

• ALSC’s Digital Media Resources, a list of resources focused on technology news and reviews of digital content
• APPitic, a directory of educational apps (iOS only) created by Apple Distinguished Educators
• Best Apps for Kids’ Back to School Apps for Kids (2015 edition), with lists organized by grade level
• Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, which highlights technology that can be used to enhance learning
• Graphite, Common Sense Education’s platform that evaluates digital tools and aligns them with Common Core standards
• School Library Journal’s app reviews

Tara Smith is a teen librarian at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, and is a member of the ALSC Children and Technology Committee.

The post Back to School with Homework Help Apps and Websites appeared first on ALSC Blog.

The ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee is interested in hearing about your experiences with incorporating digital resources, social media, and technology into your summer programming.  We looked around and found some great ideas from our colleagues around the country.

Tech Labs

ALSC Stock Photo

The Frederick County Public Libraries has STEM Lab, where children can drop in to learn about or use 3D printers, apps, robotic dinosaurs, or drones.  This is similar to Darien Library’s TEA Room, (TEA stands for Technology, Engineering, and the Arts).  There, students can reserve space to use media production equipment or take classes on Raspberry Pi, 3D Printing, etc.  These programs offer a nice balance of a space/time that is both free and unstructured or structured group projects and classes.

Tech Partnerships

ALSC Stock Photo

King County Library System in Washington State has partnered with the Museum of Flight during the summer to offer tech program s such as Everyday Robot Heroes Science Workshop, Yes, It’s Rocket Science Workshop  or Rockets to the Moon Science Workshop.  These programs teach children about robotics or rockets and then allow them to build their own.  King County was able to tie these programs into their main promotional theme of the summer: superheroes!

Digital Storytelling

Outside of using e-books and apps during storytimes, digital storytelling can also describe various programming opportunities to get our patrons using simple media production tools to create, record, and share their own stories.  The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has the award winning My Storymaker site that helps children build their own stories online.  Skokie Public Library has Digital Craft Time programs, with one group of classes for grades 1-3 and another group for grades 4-6. Topics include Photoshop elements, green screen photography, and Stop Motion Animation.  Speaking of stop motion animation, last month, our committee’s blog post was on creating short stop motion animation films using a free and super easy iPad app called Stop Motion Studio.  It might be a great fall back on a rainy summer day.  Kathy Schrock offers some insightful tips and suggestions for getting started or keeping up with digital storytelling.

Take It Home Technology

ALSC Stock Photo

What about technology that children and their families could check out, take home and do together?  Meridian Library District in Idaho has Make It Take It Kits that help families to build robots, learn about circuitry, and find projects for 3D printing.

Make Magazine as many people know is a treasure trove of programs and projects that can be adapted and modified to work in a library setting.  From high to low, ideas range from 3D printing to traditional lessons on woodworking.  The projects and video sections are a must.

So please, get the conversation started in the comments section. We want your suggestions on the following:

• What programs have you done or are you preparing using technology?
• What doesn’t work that well?
• Do you work with digital resources or social media during more traditional programming?
• Is anyone filming your puppet shows, creating podcasts of original works of readers’ theater, etc.?

Michael Santangelo is the Electronic Resources Coordinator at BookOps, the shared technical services department for the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library, and chair of the Children and Technology Committee.

The post From Dinosaur Robotics to Digital Storytelling: Incorporating Technology Into Summer Programming appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Stop motion is an animation technique “to make a physically manipulated object or persona appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence,” (from Wikipedia). So, like Wallace and Grommet but, in our case, DIY and low-budget. I planned a stop motion program as a way of engaging tweens with the new set of iPads the Wellesley Free Library received thanks to a grant from the Wellesley Media Foundation. Tweens are a difficult audience to capture with technology programs, and after an unsuccessful QR code scavenger hunt, this seemed to be a fun idea that would attract tweens and leave them with new skills in using technology.

As I have written before, I am not the most technologically savvy of the new generation of children’s librarians. So I am always looking for a program idea where I can learn along with the kids, rather than needing to have prior knowledge or expertise. This hit the nail on the head. And it was fun too!

Here’s how it worked:

-I used Stop Motion Studio, a basic free app for iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. If your library has any of these devices, you can pre-load the app beforehand. Otherwise, kids who have their own personal devices may use these. Don’t worry if you do not have a large number of devices to use, because this is an activity that lends itself to working in teams. Having one device for every four kids is not only completely reasonable logistically, it also builds teamwork and collaboration. Kids will enjoy creating a story together, and taking turns playing different roles in the process.

-Next is the fun part: gathering the materials. What you need are basically toys, toys, and more toys. Working in a library that values play as an important practice for building early literacy skills, I have access to plastic animals, plushy body organs, dolls and doll house furniture, puppets, vehicles, wooden food, blocks, LEGOs, playdough, and much more. I’m sure most of you have a similar treasure trove at your fingertips. I gathered this all together along with an assortment of craft supplies, paper, and markers.

-When the participants arrived, I gave them a brief tutorial of the app. Because we were using the basic free version, we did not have access to all of the extra features which can be purchased within the app, such as sound effects, movie themes, and the ability to import images. But for a beginner class lasting only an hour, simple was fine. Some of the kids had made stop-motion videos before using the Nintendo DS, but none had used the app. They picked it up in no time. The free version of the app does include a function to change the speed of the video, and the ability to have the previous photo appear as a translucent image in the background of the camera finder, in order to more precisely see the minute change in each frame. These features were very helpful in creating the videos.

-Next I explained the concept of story-boarding, and encouraged the participants to plan out their frames before executing the video. Then they collected supplies and began to take pictures. In the end, we shared our videos with each other. The three who chose to share their video through the library’s Youtube channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEE6nkJzxnsQCemP82YXmZfLVhYE8uEzy

Overall summary:  Tweens enjoyed this fun and simple program, learned new skills on devices with which they were already somewhat familiar, and left with a sense of pride about their creations which some chose to share with the public through Library social media channels. The program’s success is determined greatly by the variety and whimsy of the materials you provide for making the videos.

Skills developed and strengthened: working using a tablet, digital photography, animation, story-boarding, working as a team.

Cost: $0

What programs have you done to engage tweens in technology? What has worked in your community?

The post Engage tweens with technology through Stop Motion Videos appeared first on ALSC Blog.

A core value of children’s librarianship has always included finding, evaluating, selecting, and collecting the best products for young people, and making them accessible to those we serve. The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children’s Video was established in the late 1980s (and first awarded in 1991) “to honor outstanding video productions for children.” The Medal reflected librarians’ desire to help shape the marketplace, by encouraging production of high quality videos for children.

At the time, video was the “new media” format of the time, and was rapidly expanding into libraries and children’s homes. Yet public opinion about videos for children varied. While some acknowledged potential for video to be a “constructive educational resource” (Project, 1989, p. 3), others felt that video presented “dangerous commercial interests,” along the lines of broadcast television.

Fast-forward 26 years, and video is now perceived as an “old” media format, slowly going the way of the typewriter, the land-line telephone, and the floppy disk. New media formats, which may or may not have useful educational value, are eliciting the same types of worries that video once did, and more. And librarians still want to have a voice in encouraging and shaping quality new media products.

To address these changes, in summer 2014, ALSC President Ellen Riordan formed the Evolving Carnegie Task Force to investigate how the existing Carnegie Medal might be “evolved” to encompass some of today’s new media formats.

The Task Force started by interviewing a panel of new media experts, including Faith Rogow, Senior Fellow at the Fred Rogers Center; Betsy Bozdech, Executive Director of Common Sense Media; Tanya Baronti Smith, Program Coordinator at the Fred Rogers Center; Jason Yip, Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center; ALSC Board Members Gretchen Caserotti, Ernie Cox, and Julie Roach; Kay Weisman, 1989 Carnegie Medal Chair (also on the ALSC Board); Martha Simpson, 2011 Carnegie Medal Chair; and ALSC’s Children & Technology Committee members Liz Fraser, Clara Hendricks, Tara Smith and Swalena Griffin.

The data from the experts provided a snapshot of the field, and helped us shape questions for the ALSC Membership survey. Yet after collecting responses, we ended up with even more questions. For example, it is relatively easy to compare books or videos, because the content is packaged in similar containers. In contrast, new media formats are not consistent. How do you find them, and how are they accessed? How can they be defined, compared, or evaluated? How should an award committee determine if a product is a “book app,” an “interactive e-book,” or an “enhanced book”? How would committee members be able to determine criteria for a “Best-of-List”? Is a new media product closer to a book or to a game, and how does that impact eligibility for inclusion?

And then there are the problems involved in evaluating new media products. Does the book app look and function the same on an iPad as it does on a different tablet? Does your library have tablets? Does your library provide access to its patrons? Does your library have a well-defined way to purchase content for tablets? Where do we begin . . . and where do we stop?

Despite the challenges in finding, defining, evaluating, and comparing new media, after the ALSC Membership survey results were in, we found general consensus among ALSC Membership that ALSC should have a leadership role in finding, evaluating, selecting and guiding the use of new media, just as librarians have always done with other media products for children, from books, to video, and beyond.

After presenting our report to the ALSC Board at Midwinter, it was agreed that this task force should have its charge extended to Annual. Stay tuned!

Evolving Carnegie Task Force Members include:

• Mary Fellows (co-chair)
• Marianne Martens (co-chair)
• Gretchen Caserotti (ALSC Board Member, and liaison to the board)
• Cen Campbell (former co-chair, now member)
• Jessica Hoptay-Brown
• Kim Patton
• Laurie Reese
• Soraya Silverman

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Marianne Martens is Assistant Professor at Kent State University’s School of Library and Information Science, co-chair of the Evolving Carnegie Task Force, and a member of ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee. You can read more about her work at mariannemartens.org, and she can be reached at [email protected].

The post Evolving the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children’s Video appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. - Pablo Picasso

Two of my favorite types of programs to offer at the library are science and art programs. Many times I find the boundaries between the two blurring, discovering connections between the two areas. That’s probably why I loved adding the “A” for art to STEM to form STEAM (a movement started by the Rhode Island School of Design: http://www.risd.edu/about/STEM_to_STEAM/).

A 6th grade class used art to explore how the eye mixes colors that are adjacent to one another.

Children experience deeper learning about science through creative, artistic activities and correspondingly, discover more about art through the lens of science (think about light and the Impressionists, Georges Seurat’s scientific approach to pointillism, Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura.) So I’m adding a little art into your Pi day today!

Children are, as Picasso noted, natural artists. For preschoolers, scribbling is a first step toward writing and drawing.

Preschooler and parent work together to glue shapes onto a mural.

Cutting with scissors, pasting and gluing, molding shapes with playdough, and scribbling all help to develop those fine motor skills that will be needed in school. Learning to appreciate art can be a bit more challenging, but something that can be encouraged. I didn’t take an art history class until college, but with online opportunities offered through Khan Academy and the Google Art Project, among others,  kids can explore art quite closely these days even if they live far from a large city with a major art museum. These sites also can develop vocabulary for talking about art. Experience with story is helpful in appreciating art, and it works both ways — children can learn about stories through art, and their knowledge of story and history can help them to understand and appreciate art.

Below are a few technological resources to support your exploration, to encourage you to help create a culture of art at your library. Hopefully these will be considered as starting points and as extensions for other activities, for there is no substitute for messy, hands-on creative activities or for an actual museum visit where you see a painting and think: “Wow! I didn’t know it was so big!”, experience a sculpture in all three dimensions, or wonder at the movement of a mobile.

Background Knowledge & Virtual Museum Visits:

Khan Academy

Web, free

From the main page, under “Subjects”, choose “Arts and Humanities” and the second heading is Art History. You might begin with the basics or try “Why Look at Art?”

There are lots of great videos and resources included here. Preview videos before showing them and consider the ages and sensitivities of your audience (no fig leaves!)

Google Art Project

Web, free

Zoom in on some objects and be amazed at how close you can get — close enough to see brushstrokes. So close that if you were in a museum, the guard would likely be coming over to talk to you!

Playing with art:

NGAKids, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

iPad, free

Explore different paintings in the collection with different interactive experiences.With some activities children will gain familiarity with the work of art: for example, adding boats, figures and changing the light of a seascape before setting it in motion. In other activities they will create their own work in that artist’s style, as when they blend rectangles of color like Mark Rothko. Their works will be saved in an online art gallery and can be shared with parental permission.

MoMA  Art Lab, Museum of Modern Art, New York

iPad, free

Explore different artworks with engaging activities — for example, try to make mobile a la Calder, though it can be tricky to balance it just right.  Or “Draw with Scissors” and create a collage in the manner of Matisse. You can also choose a blank canvas to begin and create a completely original work with the tools provided.  Children can create art they can save and share, and get a smattering of art history along the way.

Lazoo: Squiggles

iPad, free

For the preschool age, this app is a fun early literacy tool to encourage pre-writing and fine motor skills. It is easy for young children to use themselves, open-ended and responsive to a child’s touch. After children make squiggles to the cartoon drawing they press “go” and the picture becomes animated. The more squiggles the artist makes, the more exciting the result.

For more apps that encourage creativity, see the recent Common Sense media guide:

“Modern Kids Guide to Creativity (to Crafting, Coding, Composing and More)”

which features many apps and games to encourage creativity. The guide offers detailed content reviews, recommended ages, information about in app purchases and ability to share with social networks. Some are low cost or free, while a few DS games are $30.

Additional Resources:

“The Art Room” by Heather Accero, ALSC Blog, Sept. 17, 2013. http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2013/09/the-art-room/

“Library as Art Gallery” Karen Choy, ALSC Blog. May 29, 2014. http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2014/05/library-as-art-gallery/

Library as Incubator Project. http://www.libraryasincubatorproject.org/

Making Art with Children blog from the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. http://www.carlemuseum.org/blogs/making-art

“Meet Art” by Heather Bentley-Flannery. Jan. 27, 2015.  http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2015/01/meet-art/ – describes a great Matisse program

“Meet Art: Creative Hands-On Art Programs” by Heather Bentley-Flannery, ALSC Blog, Oct. 30, 2013. http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2013/10/meet-art-creative-hands-on-art-programs/

Robin L. Gibson is a Youth Services Librarian at the Westerville Public Library in Westerville Ohio and member of the Children and Technology Committee.

The post Cultivating Creativity: Technology that encourages learning about art appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, it’s a great day to show some love to my favorite blogs. Early in my career, blogs became my go-to resource for program planning and I follow quite a few in an RSS feed I can barely keep up with. (Am I the only one who still uses an RSS feed? I hear they are not widely used anymore, but I still find it quite useful!)

These are blogs, all authored by children’s/teen librarians, that I use time and again when planning programs, whether technology-based or otherwise. I hope you’ll find them useful in your own program planning!

Robot Test Kitchen—I don’t think this newish blog has been mentioned here before and I am super duper excited to tell you about it. Run by four librarians in Illinois (hi Heather, Jacquie, Michelle, and Sharon!), it covers all things tech as they relate to children’s and teen services in public and school libraries. They do product reviews (littleBits, Cubelets, LEGO WeDo, Sphero, Bee-Bots—they’ve all been covered), share program plans, and have a series called Ten Dollar Tuesdays, which features inexpensive programs that cost—you guessed it—under $10. My favorite feature is their True Confessions posts, in which they lay bare their doubts, fears, and frustrations. If you’ve ever experienced imposter syndrome or felt like you failed at a program (and haven’t we all?), these posts are so reassuring!

Library Makers is run by librarians at the Madison (WI) Public Library and features “non-traditional” programs they do for all ages. There’s WonderWorks, a series of STEM classes for preschoolers; Supper Club, an evening app-based storytime; Toddler Art Class; Craft Lab for teens; and even NeedleWorks, a sewing class for teens and adults. They provide everything you need to know to replicate the programs at your library, including materials lists and “hindsight tips.”

Jbrary—If you haven’t taken a look at all the fabulous resources offered by Jbrary, you must do so immediately! Dana and Lindsey, the two librarians who run Jbrary, write about a wide range of library programs and services, including storytimes, tween book clubs, reading lists, booktalking, and many other varied topics. And what’s really amazing is the wealth of additional resources they produce. Looking for new songs and rhymes to use in storytime? Look no further! Check out their YouTube station (which has over ONE MILLION views) or their Pinterest boards (which have almost 4,000 pins).

Thrive Thursday—Ok, so this isn’t a blog so much as a monthly round-up of blog posts about programming for school-age kids. But if you’re looking for program ideas for the elementary school set, you’ll definitely want to check this out! All their round-ups can be found on this Pinterest board.

Hopefully some of these are new-to-you resources that you’ll find invaluable. I also want to give a shout out to a few other favorites: Little eLit (new media in libraries), Mel’s Desk (baby storytimes) and Storytime Underground (all things storytime). If they’re unfamiliar to you, I encourage you to check them out as well!

Liz Fraser is Coordinator of Children’s Services at the Belmont (MA) Public Library and serves on the ALSC Children and Technology Committee. She writes about library programs for kids at Getting Giggles and can be found on Twitter as @lizfraserlib.

The post Blogs to Love appeared first on ALSC Blog.

This fall at the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Central Library in Baltimore, MD, we welcomed a traveling exhibit of Maurice Sendak’s works. Maurice Sendak, The Memorial Exhibition: 50 Years, 50 Works, 50 Reasons features exactly that, 50 of Sendak’s works spanning his career accompanied by 50 quotes from authors, academics, and celebrities about his art and books.

Our incredible Art Director, Jack Young, immediately got busy finding a way that we could help the exhibit be interactive. While we knew that the artwork was impressive on its own, we wanted to really make Sendak’s seminal book Where the Wild Things Are truly come alive. In Young’s artist’s eye, Max’s bedroom and ship took physical form.

A family explores Max’s bedroom come to life.

The result of all of this is an experience of Sendak’s art: seeing it in person, up close and experiencing it by physically stepping into the art of a beloved children’s book.

And here’s where we ran into what my dear colleague and friend would call a “high class problem”: we started drawing groups of students from schools all around the greater Baltimore area. Lots of them. Sometimes, one hundred kids would descend upon our library unannounced.

That’s when my awesome colleagues (Hi Wesley and Selma!) came up with an idea to do a video introduction to the exhibit. It was something we could show to a large group of students that would frame their visit, but wasn’t dependent on staff. It was more engaging than paper brochures. With the help of our technology guru, Ryan O’Grady, it became a quick reality.

Had we had limitless resources and time, we could have made an app! We could have done a badge-type scavenger hunt that would have connected to other library materials and resources! We could have let kids 3D print their own wild things to take home!

But we didn’t.

Frankly, we couldn’t.

Sometimes, even though we can dream it up, we just can’t do it. Librarians feel a lot of pressure to be sure that we’re keeping up with what’s cutting edge, providing experiences we know we want students to have with technology, and challenging ourselves as professionals to innovate.

And then sometimes, there are one hundred fourth graders staring you in the face and you realize that in this case, really, it’s about the art and bringing books alive for children and families. It’s about sharing an opportunity that might be once in a lifetime.

Opening the door inside of Max’s bedroom reveals this fun surprise: Max himself!

Here’s my big aha: it’s okay not to make an app. And it’s okay to be okay with it.

So while we didn’t make use of any real 21st century technology, we did make use of what’s becoming a bit “retro” in the land of tech: video. Teachers have been thrilled by this simple introduction to the exhibit, and students sit up and pay attention.

My takeaway from this is to let the content, the intent, the purpose be your guide with technology. Choose what makes sense for your population and your mission. And while you shouldn’t shy away from opportunities to engage with and utilize what is new and cutting edge, don’t forget about those tech resources you have from days past that are still with us, still useful, and might just be the solution to your one hundred student problem.

— Jessica Brown
Children’s Services Coordinator
Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD

I love nature and the outdoors, and like to build on children’s natural curiosity and sense of wonder in library programming. Technology is part of our world today, and even more so, part of our children’s world. I’m excited about some of  the ways that technology can encourage and enhance exploration of the natural world. Here are six apps that you can share with children and families. All require users to do something in the world, beyond the device itself. Most can be used by preschool children, with parent/caregiver assistance, and by elementary age and older children more independently.

Merlin Bird ID

(free, iPad, iPhone, Android)
I’m a big fan of citizen science projects and have participated in Project Feederwatch with my own children for close to ten years. A few years ago I starting sharing information about The Great Backyard Bird Count in a storytime on birds and birdwatching. I was delighted when the Cornell Lab of Ornithology developed the Merlin Bird ID app. The question and answer format is easy enough for preschoolers to use (with an adults help, at least initially, as it involves reading).  It asks where the bird was seen (on the ground, in a tree, flying, etc.), what three main colors it was, and what size using a comparison chart that preschoolers can relate to. Then it comes up with possibilities for that bird. We identified one bird as a group from a picture of a Northern Cardinal, the state bird of Ohio, that I had seen at my feeder that day. Then children explored on their own using the three ipads we have for use in programming. The Merlin app also has a bird guide for browsing and playing different bird calls, an aspect that the children were particularly drawn to. Just listen to the Wild Turkey and you’ll see what I mean!

Other apps that build on children’s interest in the natural world include:

Out-A-Bout

(free, iPhone, iPad)

Developed by the Fred Rogers Center, this app for preschoolers encourages movement, physical activity, and early literacy. It requires interactivity, as you take a photo of your child doing different activities like pretending to climb a tree, to jump, to squat like a frog.  Then the app creates a storybook from the images, that can be read multiple times, saved, and shared.

Nature’s Notebook

(free, iPhone, iPad, Android)

From the USA National Phenology Network, Nature’s Notebook is a citizen science project focused on recording seasonal changes in plants and animals. You register with the website, and then use the app to record observations. Lesson plans are provided for students from elementary to high school.  I already do programs on hibernation (getting ready for winter), the frog and butterfly life cycle, and trees, so I’m looking forward to suggesting this app to parents and teachers.

Trees Pro HD

(free, iPhone, iPad; two additional tree packs for $2.99; Android: $12.99)

This app can help identify trees by leaf type, bark, and fruit, flower or nut. Take a quiz to test your tree knowledge.

Project Noah

(free, iPhone, iPad, Android)

Another citizen science opportunity that is very kid-friendly and encourages closer observation of the natural world. A child, or family together, can choose missions, local or global, to participate in. Earn patches as you record nature spottings along the way, from the initial Tadpole patch to Bug Lover (50 arthropods) or Reptile Specialist (20 reptile spotting). The field guide includes photos from other Project Noah participants with a map of where the plant or animal was spotted.

Night Sky Lite

(free, iPhone, iPad, Android)

Just hold your device up to the sky and this app identifies stars, constellations, and planets overhead. Great for budding stargazers. For those who want to learn more, upgrades provide additional information about the wonders overhead (and eliminate the ads at the bottom.)

What are some of your favorite apps for nature or outdoor exploration?

-Robin L. Gibson is a Youth Services Librarian at the Westerville Public Library in Westerville Ohio and member of the Children and Technology Committee.

This weekend I went to Maker Faire Atlanta. Maker spaces have been on my mind for the last year. I have looked into 3-D printers, laser cutters, Arduinos, sewing machines, jewelry making, stop-motion videos – the list goes on. There is so much to offer, but where to start. No one wants to purchase expensive equipment that will sit untouched. I want to know what will attract people and keep them engaged with the library and each other. So far I have decided on a mobile maker space, but what to add. A grant opportunity is looming so now is the time to strike. I took to the streets to observe what the people wanted.

The first exhibit drew my attention. It was surrounded by a dozen little boys and I soon discovered why. Two homeschool parents and their children had a table full of “Weapons of Miniature Destruction.” Now, I do not condone weapons, but those kids were having a lot of fun with the crossbows, catapults and other “implements of mayhem” made from clothespins, rubber bands and Popsicle sticks. The kids wore safety goggles and aimed beans at a cardboard castle. As I picked up the catapult, I could not help but admire the engineering and the spirit of sharing that led this group to share their talents with other makers. I quickly moved on before I was blinded by a bean.

Next, I saw a librarian helping children sew LED lights into fabric squares. The children and librarian had so much patience. I didn’t even know that kids knew how to sew these days. There were flying machines, screen painting, and a kite making table. A mobile maker space truck soon caught my eye. In front of the truck, were mini-maker trunks set on a table. Taped to each trunk was a maker challenge. Inside the boxes, there were everyday materials such as fabric, paper cups, pipe cleaners and tape. The table was so crowded I had to wait in line to peek over the kids’ shoulders. Moving on, I saw people making Morse code bracelets and trying a Morse code machine, using various keys to find the right lock, terrariums, more LED light stations, and of course lots of 3-D printers. Unfortunately, the only people demonstrating squishy circuits did not show up. I guess I have to make my own.

I was surprised at how popular the no-tech and low-tech stations were with the kids. So what is my take away? I should listen to the many people who have urged hesitant folks like me not to become intimidated or stymied by the big flashy items. Those kids really enjoyed those Popsicle catapults and so did I.

Swalena Griffin is the Branch Manager at the East Roswell Library in Georgia, and a member of ALSC’s Children & Technology Committee.

App-advisory can be intimidating, especially for those of us who are not heavily engaged in touch-screen technology in our personal lives.  Although I am excited to be a new member of the Children and Technology Committee, and this is a professional interest of mine, I must confess: I don’t own a smartphone or a tablet.  But I strongly believe that whatever your personal habits or philosophies, as professionals, we need to be willing and able (and enthusiastic!) to be media mentors, modeling responsible new media use and providing recommendations for parents and families.  With so many apps out there, many of which are labeled “educational,” we need to be able to provide parents with trusted recommendations and advice.  If you can do reader’s advisory, you already have the skills to do app advisory! Here are some suggestions, based on what we did at the Wellesley Free Library.

Get to know your material!  Read app reviews (see list of review sources below) and keep track of the apps about which you read. We use a Google spreadsheet, so that all Children’s Department staff can contribute.  This includes, when available, recommended age (though this is something significantly lacking in many app reviews), price, platform, categories, and our comments.  Keeping this information centralized and organized makes it easy to come up with specific apps to recommend to a patron, or to pull for a list.

Play around with the apps!  If you have money to spend (consider asking your Friends group for money for apps, especially if you will be using the apps in library programs), download some apps that seem interesting and try them out.  Even if you can’t spend money, you can try out free apps or download free “lite” versions of apps.  Playing with the app allows you to give a more in-depth description and detailed information in your advisory (consider the difference between recommending a book based on a review you read and having read the book itself).

Choose your method of advisory. App advisory can take many forms. There is the individual recommendation at the reference desk, there are app-chats (the app version of the book-talk), which have been discussed in an article on the ALSC blog by Liz Fraser, and then there are app-lists.  For the past year, we have created monthly themed app lists, mostly for young children between the ages of 2 and 6.  The themes have included: interactive books, music, math, letters, and more. Be sure to include free apps as well as apps available for non-Apple devices on your lists.

Provide advice, along with recommendations.  On the back of our paper app lists, and on the website where we post links to the app-list Pinterest boards, we offer advice to parents about using interactive technology with young children.

A year later, still without a smartphone or tablet, I feel much more confident about recommending apps to patrons, reviewing and evaluating apps, and building our collection, and you can too!  You already have the tools for evaluating media that meets children’s developmental needs and creating interesting and attractive advisory methods for families.  The next step is simply taking it to a new platform!

Some of our favorite review sources for apps:

Children’s Technology Review
Cybils Award
Digital Storytime
Horn Book App of the Week
Kirkus ipad Book App Reviews
Little elit
Parents’ Choice Awards
School Library Journal App Reviews

Clara Hendricks is a Children’s Librarian at the Wellesley Free Library in Wellesley, MA. She is a member of ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee.

At the recent ALA Annual in Las Vegas, I was part of a panel named “Whet Your Appetite: Rapid Reviews of Apps for Children from Preschool to Tweens” along with Paige Bentley-Flannery, Cen Campbell, and Claire Moore. Our session provided rapid reviews of an assortment of apps, and my portion was on multicultural apps for young people. Based on the ever-growing number of book apps for young readers available in the iTunes store, I wanted to learn more about multicultural book app offerings. Limiting our search to Apple products for the sake of convenience (since I am an iPad user), my graduate assistant Rebecca Price and I combed through the iTunes store, various review sites including Kirkus, School Library Journal, Hornbook, Publishers Weekly, many of the blogger sites that cover apps, such as Carisa Cluver’s Digital Storytime and Cen Campbell’s Little eLit. Frankly, we had a terrible time finding quality apps that reflected diversity. And of those that were available, many were flawed.

One such book app, A Song for Miles, by Tiffany Simpkins Russell, Ph.D., with illustrations by Raheli Scarborough, features beautiful illustrations that look like oil or acrylic on canvas, but there is no explanatory note about the art. The app has very limited interactivity, and is subsequently more of an enhanced book rather than a book app.  The text is about a father educating his young son about the music that inspires him, and he describes songs by artists from Earth, Wind, & Fire to Stevie Wonder, but unfortunately, none of this music is included in the app. In order to hear the music, on the last page, there is a list of the music described, and readers can “Tap on the song titles below to view artist catalog in iTunes.” I imagine that the author and illustrator may not have realized the licensing roadblock their story posed, and they may have had other intentions at the outset, but unfortunately, in the end, this book ends up being little more than a commercial of songs available for purchase.

The Story of Kalkalilh, by Bramble Berry Tales, developed by Loud Crow Interactive, is a book app based on an oral story told by the Squamish people of southwestern British Columbia. According to the developer’s site: “With Bramble Berry Tales we saw a need to bring three oral histories incredibly dear to the Squamish, Sto:lo, and Cree Nations to life”. In addition to English, French, and Spanish, the app can be played in Squamish. The app received a starred review from Kirkus and was included on the 2013 Kirkus list of Best Book Apps. Unfortunately, while this app featured easy navigation throughout and a nice feature of being able to click on icons to hear Squamish words pronounced and get background information on terms such as Potlach (Tl’enk) and Longhouse (Lam’), which are specifically relevant to the setting of the story, I am not able to judge the cultural authenticity of this app, nor could I find reviews that spoke to the app’s cultural accuracy.

The New York Times recently published articles by the late Walter Dean Myers and his son Christopher about the lack of diverse books in the US. Christopher Myers cited a study by the Cooperative Children’s book center at the University of Wisconsin which found that Of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, only 92 featured an African American character. As a result of these articles, writer Ellen Oh created the Twitter hastag #WeNeedDiverseBooks.

As our roles shift and we increasingly are tasked with providing digital resources for our patrons, it is important that we seek out, collect, and provide access to balanced digital collections, just as we do with print resources. We need diverse book apps indeed. But we must maintain a critical perspective as we evaluate those, and separate blatantly commercial products from quality ones worth sharing with our communities.

Title: The Story of Kalkalilh

Title: A Song for Miles

Marianne Martens is Assistant Professor at Kent State University’s School of Library and Information Science and a member of ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee. You can read more about her work at mariannemartens.org, and she can be reached at [email protected].

How does your library  welcome children with special needs?   Have you thought about offering sensory storytimes for children on the autism spectrum or with sensory processing issues? Can technology help librarians serve this population better?  Amy Price, Librarian at Oakstone Academy in Westerville, Ohio developed Digital Sensory Storytime to help meet student needs. Oakstone serves many students with autism or sensory processing issues. Additionally, in cooperation with the State Library of Ohio, Price created a series of video tutorials that detail her process: Digital Sensory Storytime on the Ohio Ready to Read website. This site also includes a resource guide with a sample digital sensory storytime, app recommendations, and more! It a wonderful starting point for anyone interested in understanding and serving this population.

Interestingly, Price has found interactive digital stories have particular aspects that are especially effective for children with sensory processing issues. Price notes three essential characteristics of an interactive digital story:

• full color pictures
• full text (preferably highlighted)
• an audio read to me function

For example, the read to me function of a digital book is especially valuable because it can be understood more easily by a person with auditory processing issues: the word is pronounced exactly the same each time in the digital story, whereas a human voice may pronounce the same word slightly differently each time.

Example of a page from a social story created by the author.

Additional techniques Price includes are picture schedules, social stories and how to create them, and other aspects to consider such as lighting, sounds, smells, etc. when thinking about creating a welcoming environment to support these children. The video tutorials definitely increased my own awareness of differing needs. And don’t worry if you don’t have time/staff to create an entirely new program: Price advocates for including these children in traditional storytime and offers tips to help make inclusion successful.

If you are interested in learning more about serving patrons with autism and sensory processing issues, there are many great resources to help you get started:

• ALSC Blogger Renee Grassi posts on sensory storytimes (and films) and serving children with special needs offer more insight and resources.
• Videos and resources from Libraries & Autism: We’re Connected, developed by the Scotch Plains Public Library and Fanwood Memorial Library are helpful for all library staff as children who come to storytime will also check out materials and visit other parts of the library.
• Also of note is a recent book Programming for Children and Teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Barbara Klipper, ALA Editions, 2014.

-Robin L. Gibson is a Youth Services Librarian at the Westerville Public Library in Westerville Ohio and member of the Children and Technology Committee.

Over the past year, I’ve been experimenting with using apps in programs for kids in grades K-5, with great success! Sometimes I plan a program entirely around an app (like using LongExpo to do light painting and Stop Motion Studio to make stop motion animation movies). Other times I come across an app that I think would enhance a program I have already planned. Below are three examples of how I’ve incorporated an app into an otherwise tech-free program.

Screen shot of the Little Things Forever app, taken by the author.

Little Things Forever by KlickTock (App Store: $2.99, Google Play: free)
In this app, you try to find hidden objects in a large collage-style image. On some levels, you race to find everything before time runs out.

Over spring break, a coworker and I did an I Spy program for kids in grades 3-5. The kids assembled their own I Spy-style collages using paper and small objects. They wrote a list of the objects to find and we photographed the results. The kids finished their collages at different times so it was the perfect opportunity to use this app, because kids could easily join in as they finished. I projected it onto a large screen and manipulated the image on the iPad while the kids gathered around the screen and pointed out the objects as they found them. I had been uncertain about how this would play out in a group setting, but the kids worked cooperatively and were quite enthusiastic about it.

My First Tangrams Lite by Alexandre Minard (App Store: free/full version is $1.99)
Tangrams are ancient Chinese puzzles that use seven specific shapes (five triangles of different sizes, a square and a parallelogram) to create images, such as a cat or boat. This app has kids assemble the images by dragging pieces into the right spot on the screen and includes pieces with different shapes (rectangle, semi-circle) than a traditional tangram.

As part of a series of STEM programs for kids in grades K-2, I did a program on tangrams. I read a story aloud, the kids put together various tangrams, and they did a craft. At the end, I passed out four iPads and the kids worked on the app in pairs. Even the kids who had a hard time with the actual tangram pieces understood the app and had fun with it. I think it builds different skills than actually holding puzzle pieces in your hand, but it was a nice complement to the rest of the program.

Underground Kingdom by Visual Baker (App Store: $2.99)
This is a Choose Your Own Adventure book turned into an app, about a person who falls into a seemingly bottomless crevasse in Greenland and finds a secret underground world. This style of story lends itself quite well to the app format.

Ok, I admit that I haven’t actually used this one in a program. I planned to use it last summer in a read-aloud program for kids in grades 2-4. It was an informal program in which we read funny picture books and chapters of longer books, and I was looking for activities to break up the reading. I ended up scrapping the app at the last minute for time reasons. But I think it would be great to do with a group; every time you run into a decision that has to be made you could have the kids vote and go with the majority. If you try this, let me know how it goes!

Liz Fraser is Children’s Librarian/Technology Coordinator at the Ela Area Public Library in Lake Zurich, IL and serves on the ALSC Children and Technology Committee. She writes about library programs for kids at Getting Giggles and can be found on Twitter as @lizfraserlib.

What?! Makerspaces again?! No, not really. Though makerspaces in libraries has been a seemingly ubiquitous topic of conversation and debate the past several years, building one at your library is for another post on another day. Still, you’ve probably heard of all sorts of program-based maker ideas being implemented at libraries across the country, or maybe designed a few programs yourself (see Andrea Vernola’s recent post on Exploring Tech with Kids, which is full of great links and program ideas). But these programs can be expensive to run, the technology can become obsolete quickly, and the staff effort involved can be significantly greater than with other kinds of programs.

So is making, especially high-tech making like you see featured in all those library publications, out of reach for your financially-strapped or short-staffed library? Not necessarily. By reaching out to nearby private makerspaces and maker organizations, libraries who would like to try out a maker program or who cannot afford to offer access to more expensive maker equipment on their own can start to participate in this movement.

For instance, in the Baltimore and D.C. area a special company has popped up to provide kid-centric maker programs and activities to local libraries, schools, and other organizations. FutureMakers, founded in 2010, provides a wide assortment of maker projects and exposure to advanced tech equipment for kids ranging from first grade through early high school. My library system has had FutureMaker coaches come with 3D printers, vinyl cutters, MaKey MaKeys, miniature robot electronics, sewing machines, laptops, LEDs, electric drills for hacking Legos…they’ll bring pretty much anything that you can think of that involves making and can be transported in a van. The focus is on allowing the kids access to these great tools and giving them the creative space they need to make something uniquely their own.

FutureMakers logo, attributed to https://kidsmakethingsbetter.com/

A few years ago, FutureMakers had been primarily working with local schools to bring the maker philosophy and technology into the classroom. By reaching out to them, our library was able to tap a ready-to-go resource that made maker programs almost instantly available to us for a per-program fee, which was not too much more than other performers we contract with regularly. Library staff who are supervising the programs are also encouraged to learn and even participate with the kids, which has been an easy and informal way for staff to learn more about making and about using maker tools and technology.

Collaborating with FutureMakers has been a great experience for my library, but not every community has a company like it to draw from. Other collaborators could be nearby private makerspaces or local vocational schools looking for a way to reach out. Those avenues might require a bit more effort, but could become valuable partnerships that could relieve some of the administrative and cost burden from library staff and library budgets.

Do you have tech or maker programs at your library resulting from collaboration with a local business or organization? How did that work out for your library? Any lessons learned or best practices? List them in the comments!

Rachael Medina is a Programming Coordinator at Baltimore County Public Library. She is a member of the ALSC Children and Technology Committee.

I really enjoyed writing for the ALSC blog about how I use Evernote for my storytime archive and thought it would be fun to share another online tool I make heavy use of, and see what your experience has been.

Diigo is a social bookmarking tool (like delicious or Google Bookmarks ) that you can use to save links to websites, pdfs, slide sets, and other sites on the web. Because it’s cloud-based, it’s available to you no matter where you are. I’ve used other systems before, but in 2011, Google Bookmarks rolled back their lists feature and hundreds of my carefully curated links were left in one untagged pile in my account, grrr, and Delicious looked for awhile like they were going to get shut down (they weren’t, just sold from Yahoo.) So I looked around for an alternative and found Diigo, which I’ve been using happily ever since.

Caveat: This is NOT an exhaustive Diigo tutorial. I know I am not using this service to the max, and if you are using it too you probably know things I don’t, so share them in the comments! At the same time, I know other services may have similar features; Diigo is just the one I know best.

Basics

Once you set up a Diigo account (there are free and premium options), to add a url to Diigo, you can use the “Add” button on your Diigo page, or use a bookmarklet or a browser extension. You fill in a form with the url, title of resource, and then can add an annotation and some tags. If you use the bookmarklet, the url and title will auto-fill and Diigo will suggest tags for you. Then the links go into your Diigo library in a big list, most recent on the top.

Search & Tags

It doesn’t matter how the links are stored, however, because there’s a search available that checks for keywords in the url, title, annotation, and tags. Before I started building up my library, I spent some time thinking about my taxonomy, and really made a commitment to tagging, and I think this has helped me a great deal. I thought about how I remember the resources I come across, and decided to tag for format (PDF, slides, blog post, website, abstract, etc.), for content (I use the six skills and five practices from ECRR a LOT as tags for my work), and also by project (staff newsletter, storytime, collection development, etc.). I’ll think, “Oh, there was that pdf handout with vocabulary activities I came across while I was writing the last newsletter,” and then I can look for “vocabulary” and “pdf” and “newsletter” and pull it up. Your tags will be different, but don’t hesitate to use them–there is an advanced search so you can look for combinations of tags or keywords and narrow your results list.

Highlights & Notes

The search feature is great but what I REALLY love about Diigo is the ability to mark up the webpage and save those notes with the site. You can do two things: highlight specific text on the page, and write general sticky notes. Both are saved with the site in your Diigo library, so when you come back later, you can see what your thoughts were and what you liked from the site. PLUS you can send a marked up link to a colleague, who can see your notes and highlights with without needing a Diigo account of their own.

Here’s a link to an article I came across last month while I was looking for great quotes about why writing is an important early literacy skill. You can see my highlights–I didn’t make any notes on this one. http://diigo.com/01d9jo

My colleague Laurie Anne thought this might be something she could use in her outreach work with busy preschool teachers: She could send them a regular email with a link to a new article every month, with certain points already highlighted. It could also be a quick way to start discussion within your own department.

Here’s a really little thing that I appreciate: say I come across a website or article and I’m not sure if I’ve read it before. I open up my Diigo bookmarklet and if I’ve already saved the site, the bookmark form pops up filled in, and any highlights I made previously appear. I don’t have to go searching through my links to see if I’ve already saved it.

Groups & Lists

Diigo is a social network, though you can decide how social you want to be. You can allow followers and can follow other users, and see what they are bookmarking on your Network page, but you can also set your account so no one can follow you and you can mark your bookmarks private so no one can see them. You can also make a group, inviting specific users to join, and use it as a way to gather resources for a department or library-wide project, joint presentation, or paper. You can post notes to the group, so there’s room for general conversations as well; you’re not limited to comments on links to communicate.

Another helpful feature is the ability to make lists. You can manually add links to a list, which you can then print (your annotations will show up along with the title and url), give out as a simple url (like a bit.ly), or play the list as a slideshow. I’ve used the printed lists for quick handouts for staff trainings and the list url during presentations as a “consult later” resource for attendees.

Connecting Accounts

You can also link your Twitter account, and Diigo will save your favorite tweets (up to 20 a day for free users); you can tweet or Facebook your links; you can have Diigo generate a blog post with a link you saved and your annotations; save links to Diigo via email; use Diigo via app on your phone; and probably a million other things I’m missing.

Are you on Diigo too? Let us know how you use it!

Melissa Depper is a Librarian in the Child and Family Library Services department of the Arapahoe (CO) Library District, where she starts every week off right with baby storytime. She serves on the ALSC Children and Technology Committee, is on Diigo as MelZed, and is on Twitter, right now probably, at @MelissaZD.

“We all have only one life to live on earth. And through television, we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative, imaginative ways.”                                                                                                   Fred Rogers

When Mr. Rogers looked at the new medium of television in the 1950s, he saw nothing of value for children. But instead of writing it off, he saw the potential of the new medium to reach children and crafted an entirely new approach and way of using television. That is the model that I look to in using technology with children. Do you approach new media with fear or look for the potential, for “creative, imaginative ways” that enrich life?

Many librarians are familiar with and emphasize the five practices of ECRR2 (Every Child Ready to Read 2) in library programs. Can we highlight these practices with intentional use of technology? These would be good ways to model best practices for parents and caregivers.

talking

Visit the Fred Rogers Center’s Early Learning Environment or Ele (pronounced “Ellie”) for short. Here you will find a variety of media focused on improving children’s language and reading skills. You can create your own Ele, search by age, activities (talking and listening, reading, writing, playing, arts, math & science) and media type (books, videos, games, songs, interactive tools, mobile). The Ele brochure notes that “Talking is teaching. Talking with children is a great way to support early literacy skills. For every activity on Ele, we provide suggestions on how to talk about it, and why it matters.” The Ele is a wonderful resource to recommend to parents, teachers, child care providers and others in your community as well as to find some of the best media you can use yourself.

singing

Try the Everyday Grooves app (free) from the Fred Rogers Center which provides catchy songs to accompany everyday activities and help parents create a sense of routine for their children. Examples include getting dressed, bathtime, brushing teeth, clean up, and my favorite, “We Like to Read.”

Sing along with Grow A Reader (free) from the Calgary Public Library which includes videos of 25 different action rhymes and songs. Features some pretty awesome librarians too!

reading

Does your library subscribe to Tumblebooks? Have you ever used one in a storytime? Incorporating one can be a great way to make patrons aware of a library resource that is often underutilized. In storytime I like to show the print book and then the Tumblebook. In a read-aloud Tumblebook, the text appears on the page and words are highlighted as the book is read aloud. The other day I was helping an ESL tutor find materials and she was delighted to discover this feature. She explained that parents of the children she tutors want to help their children learn English and understand the importance of reading aloud, but they do not know how to read English themself. The Tumblebooks can make it possible for these parents to read aloud with their children.

Explore the International Children’s Digital Library (free, there’s also an app!) This one-of-a-kind library is devoted to children’s books from around the world, many of which are not available in any other format, in many different languages. The site’s interface is designed based on research by children — thus you can search by color of cover, and other kid friendly ways..

 writing

Touchscreens are great for those little hands that don’t have the fine motor skills to use the mouse or even grasp a crayon yet. Squiggles! is an open-ended app that encourages creativity. When children are done and press go, their scene comes to life, teaching them that the marks they make are meaningful. (free)

Storybird is a website focused on storytelling (free, with registration required). A variety of artwork in different styles is provided, and you write the story. This tool is great for parents and preschoolers to explore together. Suggest starting with just three parts – beginning, middle, and end – to help young children begin to understand the structure of a story. I encourage children to think of their story first, before using the computer. Then, choose artwork. Children can tell the story (talk!), while the adult responds, prompts as necessary and transcribes their words. My son’s preschool teacher took the time to ask children about what they drew and wrote the words on the back of their artwork. These words explaining his first scribbles were his first stories. Storybird is another way to create stories and since they are digital, can be easily shared with family far away.

playing

Have you tried “Don’t Let the Pigeon Run this App” from Mo Willems? ($5.99)

It’s all about creating a story, with children helping choose items for the story, and starring the Pigeon of course. Children have more control depending on their age: at the most basic level, the egg, the app uses shake and create technology, whereas the chick allows children to make choices. They can also record their own voices and make as many silly stories as they like.

Alien Assignment is an “augmented reality” app from the Fred Rogers Center (free). Children must interact with their environment to accomplish their mission of helping the aliens fix their spaceship. It has a scavenger hunt feel, where children must take a picture of “something you sit on” so the computer can fix the captain’s chair, or take a picture of “something smelly” to fix the garbage disposal. This app requires getting up, moving around, and talking with an adult . . . and it’s really fun!

Families will enjoy the wonder of the day from Wonderopolis (a site created by the National Center for Family Learning “to help you find learning moments in everyday life”). Curiosity, the desire to learn, begins with wonder . . . and this is a great place to start.

Technology changes rapidly and there are so many choices facing parents today that it can be overwhelming. The latest guidelines on media use by the American Academy of Pediatriacs state that  “Parents, educators and pediatricians should participate in media education, which means teaching children and adolescents how to make good choices in their media consumption.”(See more at: Managing Media) Librarians can help parents discover some of the best resources out there. Media literacy skills can be built along with early literacy skills. We can encourage parents to be involved with their kids media diet, to ask questions about what they are doing, and most of all, to explore new media together. In the midst of it all, we can continue to talk, sing, read, write, and play with young children.

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/quotes-that-show-that-mr-rogers-was-a-perfect-human-being

Robin L. Gibson is a Youth Services Librarian at the Westerville Public Library in Westerville Ohio and member of the Children and Technology Committee.

Screen shot of the apps we suggested for toddlers and preschoolers.

How often have you been asked “Can you recommend apps for my child?” If you haven’t had that question yet, it’s probably just a matter of time as more families and schools acquire tablets that they need help figuring out. I’ve been getting that question with increasing frequency at my library over the last couple years and have had conversations with parents, kids and teachers about apps. While librarians have access to a few great professional review sources, it can be really frustrating for parents who are looking for curated lists of app suggestions. The typical app review website can be difficult to slog through and the reviewers’ qualifications are often ambiguous. Cen Campbell of Little eLit has been working with librarians and others in the early childhood education field to develop an app recommendation, curation and evaluation tool, which is much-needed and I’m looking forward to seeing the final product. However, even with better online tools, there will still be demand for one-on-one advisory that helps people find the right apps for their specific needs. And that’s where we public librarians come in! “App advisory” is a natural extension of services we already provide to our patrons, like readers’ advisory. To help satisfy this need, my library introduced a series of app advisory programs this fall, called “Appy Hour.” The concept is that we provide food–“app”etizers!–and show patrons a variety of apps around a theme. (I can’t take credit for the cute name or concept; a bunch of other libraries have used the name over the last couple years.)

The Operation Math app, which was a big hit at our program. It’s math meets a James Bond-esque spy.

Last month, another children’s librarian and I did our first Appy Hour on “Kids’ Apps (For Parents to Know About).” Our adult librarians will be doing sessions on “Librarians’ Favorite Apps for Adults and Teens” and “Library Apps” later this fall. For the program on Kids’ Apps, I started by briefly going over a few websites I like to recommend to parents for finding app reviews. Then it was time to get to the apps! We provided a handout with about 50 apps we selected, divided into three groups: toddler/preschool, grades K-2, and grades 3-5. They were on a variety of topics, from alphabet apps for the younger kids to math apps for the older kids, and across a range of price points, although most were in the $1.99-$3.99 range. We focused on apps for Apple devices because that’s what we have at our library, but about half were also available for Android through Google Play. We projected our iPad and demonstrated how to use about 15 of our absolute favorite apps, pointing out why we selected them and highlighting some of the features. Because the patrons couldn’t see how we were manipulating the apps (they could see the projected screen, but not the iPad screen itself), we described what we were doing as we went along.

Little Fox Music Box app, a fun app for preschoolers.

We got a very positive response to the program and our patrons seemed happy with our suggestions. It also ended up being a great way for us to gauge our community’s needs; we learned more about what types of apps our patrons are interested in and at what price point. With this knowledge, going forward we’ll be better able to anticipate and respond to our patrons’ app advisory needs.

Are you doing app advisory, either as a program or informally, at your library? Tell us about it in the comments!

Liz Fraser is Children’s Librarian/Technology Coordinator at the Ela Area Public Library in Lake Zurich, IL and is a member of the Children and Technology Committee.

The right book for the right child at the right time. 
- Anne Carroll Moore

Starting with Anne Carroll Moore, the first children’s librarian at the New York Public Library, one of the most important roles we have as children’s librarians has always been to get great books into the hands of young people.  As the definition of “book” changes, Moore’s quote might be modified today to read “The right content in the right format for the right child at the right time.”

The mission behind our work has changed over the years, from the Progressive Era “Child Protector” librarians, to the “Child Advocate” librarians of the 1970s, and now, as content shifts from print to digital formats, we have a new responsibility in making sure young people have access to the best possible content whatever the format.

When I started as Assistant Professor at Kent State University’s School of Library and Information Science in Fall 2012, one of my charges was to help train our future children’s librarians to critically evaluate digital content—from apps, to transmedia, to multiplatform books—so that they in turn would be able to weed through the massive amount of content currently available, and think critically about their purchasing choices.

My course “Youth Literature in the Digital Realm” is designed to help future librarians become savvy consumers and critical evaluators of digital content, knowledgeable about the production process, and excellent presenters of all things digital. Some of the questions we explore during the semester include:

• When is a digital format better than print?
• How do digital formats blur traditional roles of content creators, librarians, and readers?
• What are the legal, ethical, cultural, and sociological issues in reading in digital formats?
• Do digital formats erase (or enhance) the digital divide?
• If the content in question was first published as a print book, does making it digital enhance the reading experience?

Picture books exist in many formats, from 32-page hardcover books, to board books, bath books, and pop-ups. Apps represent the latest trend in picture book content, and there are many excellent examples out there. One of my favorites is Bats: Furry Fliers of the Night by Mary Kay Carson and published by Story Worldwide and Bookerella. The complex, multi-tiered content in this example makes for a rich reading experience, and it is clear that this was created as an original book app.

But what about when digitization of backlist titles primarily focuses on gamification of the reading experience? One such title is the highly gamified Peter Rabbit app, in which (as my colleague Junko Yokota has demonstrated) a splatting blackberries activity distracts from the story. I wonder what Beatrix Potter—or her dear friend Anne Carroll Moore—would think about this one?

Marianne Martens is Assistant Professor at Kent State University’s School of Library and Information Science and a member of ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee. You can read more about her work at mariannemartens.org, and she can be reached at [email protected].

HTML for Babies Board Book

STEM is dominating educational conversations these days. But for those of us in public libraries, how can we integrate the STEM concepts into our work? Lots of children’s libraries have LEGO clubs and that certainly is a good start. We may not have a formal learning environment in our public libraries, but we do have high demand for programming. At my library, whenever we are developing new programs or services, we like to look around at the community to identify a need, then research whether or not someone else is filling that need. When it comes to technology, often there is a huge hole just waiting for the library to fill it!

Right now, we are putting together a big STEM based fair at my library this summer and it got me thinking about technology programming for kids. Three years ago I developed Little Clickers to fill a technology education need, computer classes for preschoolers and their caregivers. Things change so quickly and now we are planning on ways to fill a new and unique need – teaching kids how to write code.

Here is the truth though, I don’t know how to write code or program! Sure, I learned some HTML in grad school, but haven’t had the time to commit to learning proper code in my free time. That isn’t going to stop us from doing programs for kids to learn, and hey, maybe we’ll learn a little along the way!

In my investigations, it seems there are 3 programming languages that are easiest for kids to start with; Python, Ruby and Scratch. Once kids are comfortable, they can graduate to the more challenging languages like Perl and C++ (to name a few). Programming is really more about problem solving than math and many coders started as young as ages 8 and 9. Some languages require kids to be confident at typing on a keyboard, while others like Scratch, are visual and just require good hand-eye coordination for image manipulation.

Here are a few resources to get kids started coding at your own library.

My colleague pointed me to quite possibly the coolest coding program for kids that I’ve seen yet, Coder Dojo. Coder Dojo is a movement to create free coder clubs that have experienced mentors from the community help kids as they learn and experiment with writing code. Starting a Dojo looks super easy and libraries definitely fit the requirements: a place with internet access, regular scheduling, volunteer support, someone to organize it and keep it “cool.” Hey, even if you can’t code, I bet you are a champion organizer! It sounds similar to the Computer Clubhouse after-school computer programs where kids from under-served communities wo

I hope you are all aware that in a few days, on Valentine’s Day, the 2011 Cybils Award Winners will be announced!

However, did you know that the lists of Cybils Finalists, posted every New Year’s Day for the last 6 years, are a wonderful resource for Readers’ Advisory?

I know, I know, ALSC and YALSA have a full slate of youth media awards, and I definitely follow them avidly and spread the word about the winners and honor books.  But the Cybils, given by kidlit bloggers, have a different emphasis. 

First, the Cybils judges are trying for books with kid appeal.  They do want books with literary merit, but they must also believe that the books will appeal to kids.

But the big reason you can turn to the Cybils for Readers’ Advisory is because of the nature of the Finalists.  The first round of Cybils judging is done by panelists who choose the Finalists.  The panelists are not looking for one stand-out book and runners-up.  They are looking to build a list of outstanding books in that particular genre for the past year.

Because the panelists are working on making a list, they work for variety in terms of appeal, theme, protagonists’ gender, and so on.  For example, you won’t have a whole stack of Historical Novels with a Female Protagonist, as might happen with the Newbery.  (And that’s fine with the Newbery; it has a different purpose.)

One more reason the Cybils Finalists lists work well for Readers’ Advisory is the sheer number of categories.  There’s no overlap; right from the start the panelists make sure a book is only considered in one category.  But where else are you going to find a judged list of the best children’s Book Apps of the year?  As well as Poetry?  Early Chapter Books?

Here are all the categories along with links to this year’s Finalists:

Book Apps

Easy Readers & Early Chapter Books

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Middle Grade)

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Young Adult)

Fiction Picture Books

Graphic Novels

Middle Grade Fiction

Nonfiction for Middle Grade & Young Adult

Nonfiction Picture Books

Poetry

Young Adult Fiction

Nex

In September, I was privileged to attend KidLitCon, a gathering of bloggers who blog about children’s books. There are many librarians in the group, but what unites the attendees is a love for reading and children’s books and getting kids excited about reading.

Even librarians who don’t blog themselves will find some gems out there in the Kidlitosphere.  You’ll hear about new books, old favorites, and even ideas for encouraging parents to read to kids.

Many attendees were Author bloggers and bloggers who focus on YA, but here are some bloggers who attended KidLitCon who specifically focus on children’s books:

Book Dads: A site that promotes children’s literacy by reviewing books dads can share with their children.

Book Moot: A school librarian’s blog covering books for all ages of children.

The Cybils: Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Award site. Blog includes many reviews of nominated books.

Diamond in the Window: This children’s literature blog includes a lovely feature called We Recommend, which highlights Readers’ Advisory from e-mailed requests.

Family Bookshelf: Reading news, ideas, and reviews.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Middle-Grade Authors: A blog by several middle-grade authors. The Book Lists are especially helpful.

Great Kid Books: A blog by a school librarian to help parents learn about great books for their kids.

Jen Robinson’s Book Page: Promoting the love of books by children, and featuring Growing Bookworms newsletter.

Kidsmomo: A blog about introducing good books directly to children.

Kid Tested, Librarian Approved: Picture book news and reviews from a children’s librarian.

Laurie Thompson: A blog specializing in children’s nonfiction and youth empowerment.

Mother Reader: A reading Mom with a great sense of humor.

Pink Me: A blog by a librarian, consultant for school libraries, and children’s book reviewer.

Rasco from RIF: Musings from the CEO of Reading Is Fundamental on books and literacy.

Reads for Keeps: Reviews especially focusing on middle grade books by a pair who love them.

Saints and Spinners: Stories, songs and stitches from a librarian and professional storyteller.

Six Boxes of Books: Three sisters who love children’s books.

Sonderbooks: My own website and blog, including sections for Picture Books, Children’s Fiction, and Children’s Nonfiction.

We Be Reading: Reviews of books for all ages, including books enjoyed by the blogger’s 7-year-old son.

One of the outstanding features of KidLitCon was how people fr