Your Wired Kid

This blog post arrives courtesy of Katie Anderson, the Youth Services Consultant at the State Library. Good Housekeeping reports on recent research into the development of kids who are saturated with electronic screen time. In summary, some screentime can be healthy, but there's a tipping point. Parents shouldn't spend their lives trying to heavily regulat electronic devices; 'tech-free zones' at home may be a happy medium.

Read the full article:

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/parenting-tips/children-overuse-electronics-technology

Dickensian London App

Did you celebrate Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday yesterday?? Whether you celebrated or missed it and want to catch up, this new App offers a great interactive way to get inside his world.

Streetmuseum: Dickens' Dark London was created by the Museum of London in conjunction with a major Dickens exhibit. The App, which is getting good reviews, takes the user through the slums of 19th century London with painstaking attention to detail. It's a great visual way to get into the past! Cost is $1.99 and it works on Mac products, you can get it here.

History of Western Typefaces Info-Graphic by Mashable

Did you know that Century Gothic font uses 30% less ink than Arial when printed? Did you know that the font Papyrus was developed from hand-written lettering? If these tidbits interest you, you are going to love this info-graphic by mashable.com. Check it out at: http://mashable.com/2011/12/08/typeface-font-history-infographic/

eReaders - learn more about it!

Interested in taking the plunge into reading digital-style, but not sure how/what/when? We have a library workshop for you on December 8th all about eReading and the library. Check out the event calendar for details.


And while we're on the subject of reading digitally, check out this review by our guest blogger Jennifer Furuyama, library school student and avid reader of ebooks. Here, she compares Amazon Kindle to the Barnes & Noble Nook:

The basic Nook will run you ninety nine dollars while the basic Kindle comes in at seventy nine. Both product websites boast that their E-Reader is the best on the market. So what sets these two products apart?
Both allow you to download books from your public library. Both are wireless, both are light, both have high resolution and both claim competitive pricing on the purchase of books. The differences are minor but depending on your intended use for the reader the following distinctions may impact your choice.

The Nook’s battery life significantly exceeds that of the Kindle but the Kindle can store four hundred more books than the Nook. On the Nook users can lend books to one another free of charge. Kindle users can borrow books from Amazon’s lending library but to do so they have to purchase an Amazon Prime membership.

If you are purchasing an e-reader for recreational reading alone these two options are comparable. However, if you are purchasing an e-reader for student use there is a clear reason to opt for the Nook over Kindle. Kindle books monitor reader progress via percentage complete. As a result there are no page numbers. Without a page number students cannot correctly cite an excerpt from a novel, a requirement in most middle and high school course work.
--Jennifer Furuyama

Interesting App - Silent Film Director

We're feeling artistic here at the library since the Teen Art Show kicks off today and includes student produced films for the first time. So, when I saw this App featured on the American Library Association's Young Adult Services blog, I thought I'd share it with you.

Silent Film Director allows you to create digital video that looks and feels like film from past decades. Want a sepia 1920s look? Can do. Interested in making a grainy Mad Men-looking 1960s film? Silent Film can also help you do that. It is compatible with Mac products and costs .99. You can find out more about it and purchase it here http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/silent-film-director/id335148458?mt=8.

Enjoy, and I hope you come check out student films at the Teen Art Show. Opening at 3:00 today, running through Nov. 23rd.
Cheers!
Dawn

Project Idea: Flipcam Booktalk Videos

I recently did a series of Booktalk videos with my Teen Library Council, and they turned out great! The kids used used a simple, relatively inexpensive one-button flipcam to film each other talking up a favorite book that they had recently read. The videos were then passed on to a fellow librarian for some quick editing work using Macintosh platform software These would be great as an in-house class project! Click the links below to view the videos in .wmv format.

The Hunger Games

Band of Brothers

Bad Kitty

Dragon Sword

Lamb

When Reading Meets Social Networking

Will this combination of reading and social networking catch on? A new Ypulse article discusses a new iPad app that adds social networking functions to reading. Sites like Shelfari and Goodreads have already taken off, and I suppose that this is the next logical step. The article does raise some good points in the negative; I feel old saying this, but I bury my nose in a book partially because it's a way to escape interaction through a computer screen! Still, I can see this being immensely useful in literature classes. I'm wondering if there's a way to restrict text notes from other users, and only make the "discussion" part of it public.
Here's the original New York Times blog piece.