By:
On:
In: This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

Publisher’s Weekly (1/19/12) reports: Unfortunately for fans of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, the trilogy ended in 2010. But fortunately, the franchise gets a new lease on life with the release of the big-screen version of the first novel on March 23. So far nearly six million fans have watched the trailer for the Hunger Games movie on YouTube. Eighth-grader Amandla Stenberg, 13, who portrays Rue in the film, talked with PW reporter Karen Springen (a longtime friend of Amandla’s mother) about reading the books, shooting the post-apocalyptic story, and getting everyone on the set to sign her copy of The Hunger Games. When didRead More →

By:
On:
In: This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

Digital Book World (1/9/12) reports: Given the choice between reading e-books or print books, children prefer e-books, a new, exploratory field study shows. Children who read e-books also retain and comprehend just as much as when they read print books, the study also suggests. A new “QuickStudy” – so named for its short duration and the small size of its sample group – from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center observed 24 families with children ranging in age from three-to-six reading both print and e-books in the Summer and Fall of 2011. Most of the children in the study preferred reading an e-book to a printRead More →

By:
On:
In: Grants and Fundraising, Ideas You Can Use, This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

School Library Journal (1/4/12) reports: Students can learn a lot about their family, themselves, and even history when they listen to grandparent’s or grand friend’s life stories. And young people can win a Lenovo ThinkCentre computer and $25,000 of EdOptions Orchard software when they enter the Legacy Project‘s 12th annual Listen to a Life Essay Contest. The national contest, which is run in partnership with Generations United, a membership organization based in Washington, D.C., receives thousands of entries every year. To enter the Listen to a Life Contest, kids ages 8 to 18 simply interview a grandparent or a grand friend who’s at least 50Read More →

By:
On:
In: Ideas You Can Use, This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

School Library Journal (1/4/2012) reports: Teen librarian Karen Jensen had a moment of inspiration and decided to create “The 2012 Project.”  Her goal? To gather 2,012 images this year that demonstrate that teens are still using libraries. But Karen can’t do it without the help of you and your teens. Visit this blog post, download posters, and put them up everywhere. Here’s how the project works: using a cell phone or a digital camera, take some photos. They can be creative or just straight-ahead shots. Add text if you’d like. Pictures can be tweeted to @TLT16 or posted directly on the Teen Librarian’s Toolbox FacebookRead More →

By:
On:
In: This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

School Library Journal (Debra Lau Whelan, December 16, 2011) reports: Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) comes to the rescue again. Just when things were looking grim for school libraries, the House and Senate this weekend passed the conference report for an Omnibus Approp riations Bill, which includes $28.6 million in federal funds for school libraries in FY 2012. And President Obama is expected to sign the bill when it lands on his desk. We’re very happy,” says Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the Washington Office of the American Library Association (ALA). “This is a tremendous victory for us. It gives school libraries money and demonstrates thatRead More →

By:
On:
In: Grants and Fundraising, Ideas You Can Use, This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

From Huffington Post Education: Big new DonorsChoose matching grant efforts By: Craig Newmark Hey, you’ve already seen our support for DonorsChoose.org, where you can help kids in school by supporting their teachers’ projects. The deal is that teachers often have to fund projects or even buy supplies from their way-too-low salaries. You can help out with small contributions. They have a new matching effort, here’s what they say: Join DonorsChoose.org to pick your passion from thousands of classroom projects, and give back this holiday season. Use the match code REALSIMPLE to double your donation. People can donate to any project(s) on DonorsChoose.org and use the code REALSIMPLE atRead More →

By:
On:
In: This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

The Digital Shift from School Library Journal (Nov. 30, 2011) reports: Penguin Group’s temporary suspension of Kindle access to its titles for libraries last week reaffirmed Wendy Stephen’s decision to go the public domain route. The school librarian at Buckhorn High School in New Market, AL, had feared just this situation: spending money on devices and titles only to have the rights potentially taken away and her students left without books. “It’s too complicated and too dicey, and that’s why I decided to go with things not under copyright because it’s a lot cleaner that way,” says Stephens, who offers ebooks to her students—but onlyRead More →

By:
On:
In: Grants and Fundraising, Ideas You Can Use, This is interesting
With: 0 Comments

School Library Journal (11/29/11) reports: Calling all school librarians: there’s still time to apply for a Laura Bush Foundation grant—but you better hurry, the deadline is December 31. If you work in a school where 50 percent or more of the student body qualifies for free or reduced lunch, then get moving. To promote a love of reading, the foundation awards media centers with grants of up to $6,000 to purchase books, magazines, and other reading materials. The goal?  To update, extend, and diversify book collections in the nation’s neediest school libraries. All grants, which are supported by private donations, are given to individual schoolsRead More →