Did you all see this:  http://tinyurl.com/383msu3 Scholastic surveyed 2000 kids between the ages of 6 and 17 about reading ebooks, and found out two key things (only one of which is highlighted in the article): kids are eager to read book on digital devices, and for two thirds of those surveyed, doing so did not make them [...]

The discussion over at the CCBC listserv just now is about “Professional Responsibility” for librarians — in particular, the set of choices a children’s librarian faces when she has a personal distaste for a book but sees a logic for including it in her collection. One librarian spoke about subscribing to a well-done, thoughtful magazine [...]

Here is the announcement I am sending around to schools. If you know of a teacher who would like to participate, get in touch. The paper says “high school” but motivated and well-trained middle school classes are welcome. Feel free to share this with others. CIVIL WAR TO CIVIL RIGHTS A NATIONAL DIGITAL HISTORY PROJECT [...]

That’s the world of e-books I’m talking about Yesterday Joyce  Valenza and I were having some easy internet training for a panel we will both be on. The technology was a snap. But I called her afterword because while it will be easy to speak online, I was not sure what we’d be talking about. [...]

I needed something to read on the 8 hour flight back home, and even though there was a handy plug on the plane, I did not want to try the ereader. So I picked up the J.M. Coetzee novel “summertime.” It is one of those novels in which a character with the same name as [...]

The New York Times magazine today has several articles about computers, games, and learning. This one is especially interesting to me because it relates directly to what I wrote about yesterday — etext versus books: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19Essays-textbooks-t.html?ref=magazine the article quotes “Evan Schnittman, a managing director at Bloomsbury Publishing,” who ”breaks down reading into three kinds: extractive reading [...]

Sorry freinds — I was able to respond to comments from my Ipad but for some reason I was not able to use this form to post. I am experimenting with the Ipad — a fun toy, a very light networked computer — as a way to begin to explore and experience the ereader world, [...]

Last week, the federal government awarded $330 million to two coalitions charged with developing standardized assessments aligned with the new Common Core Standards currently adopted by 36 states. The September 3rd New York Times indicates that both groups propose tests that use technology for administration and scoring. In some ways, it’s as if someone pressed [...]

The first meeting of my Rutgers class in Materials for Children was going well, I thought, when we stumbled into the question of how to define the difference between fiction and nonfiction? One student, who already works with kids in a library, volunteered that she asks her young readers whether they like facts or story — [...]

If you haven’t read Betsy Partridge’s post to “Fall” do so — it came at a perfect point for me. I’m working on a kind of Life and Times of J. Edgar Hoover, and was struggling with one of the most difficult context problems — the whiplash in the place of Communism in American life [...]