Published by rwatstein October 12th, 2008
in children, Microsoft and OLPC.
Some of the poorest children in the world are about to get high technology in the form of inexpensive laptops filled with software, largely as a result of battling by many of the world’s largest high-tech companies that are seeking to establish beachheads in emerging markets. In Portugal, 500,000 children will be getting laptops with Intel processors loaded with Microsoft XP operating systems and Office 2007. In Peru, poor children will be getting laptops from the One Laptop Per Child program with XP and Microsoft Office 2003, according to media reports.
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Published by rwatstein August 31st, 2008
in children, search and Ask.
With school back in session and families gearing up for the nightly homework grind, Ask.com announces the upgrade and expansion of its popular children’s and tweens’ search engine, Ask Kids ( http://www.askkids.com). Built with Ask.com’s proprietary search technology, Ask Kids delivers a search experience unlike anything for kids on the Internet today — including more relevant, kid-friendly search results presented in the most graphically vivid display of any major search engine. The Ask Kids launch advances Ask.com’s strategy of using its core search technology to fuel vertical search properties such as RushmoreDrive.com, the search engine for the Black community, launched in April 2008.
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Published by rwatstein August 31st, 2008
in children and databases.
After years of expanding education, Miami University’s Children’s Picture Book Database has expanded as well, receiving more than 1 million hits. Valerie Ubbes, director of the project, said she created the database in 1995 to expand education for children in preschool through third grade. “The picture books equal life,” Ubbes said. “It’s all about expanding health into wellness.” The database, which holds more than 5,000 children’s picture book abstracts, has partnered with Miami University Libraries, making it more accessible to all 50 states and foreign countries, Ubbes said.
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With her students out on summer break, now might be the only time to learn the whole story about Cary Kelly, the one-of-a-kind librarian with the multiple personalities. A former professional ballet dancer, Kelly, 60, sees her job these days as a different kind of performance – one that inspires children to embrace the joy of reading and grasp life lessons not easily addressed in a traditional curriculum. The Sacramento Country Day School librarian does it in ways that may be unlike any educator in the country – she goes into character, time after time after time. Voices, costumes, lingo, the whole bit.
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ALSC has added 17 new websites to Great Web Sites for Kids, its online resource containing hundreds of links to commendable websites for children. GWS features links to interesting websites, organized by subject. There is also a special section with sites of interest to parents, caregivers, and teachers, and an area devoted to sites in Spanish.
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Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008
in social networking and children.
June is Internet Safety month. With hundred of millions of teens, pre-teens-and adults-around the world using social networking sites, there’s no better time for parents to be aware of the fun, the benefits, the powerful attractions, and the potential risks that MySpace, Facebook and other similar sites offer their children.InternetSafety.com, a leader in Internet safety solutions, has assembled a list of practical tips parents can use to ensure a safe networking environment for kids: 1. Show Interest - Ask questions about how your child’s preferred social networking site or sites work. Kids are generally happy to demonstrate their knowledge if you show genuine interest. You can even ask your teen to show you how to set up your own social networking site-a great way to visit your child’s page and see what’s been posted there.
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Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008
in children, books and reading.
Children have welcomed the Harry Potter books in recent years like free ice cream in the cafeteria, but the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the United States by Renaissance Learning revealed May 5 that none of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton, and Harper Lee as the most read.
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The theme for the Summer Reading Program at many New Mexico libraries will be “Catch the Reading Bug.” Ami Segna, youth services librarian at the Alamogordo Public Library, is taking it one step further. She plans to tell children she will formally eat a bug for their viewing enjoyment. The choice of bug will be based on how much they read. “If it’s 60 percent of their reading, it will be a chocolate-covered ant. If it’s 70 percent, a cheddar-cheese flavored meal worm.”
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President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released recently. The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, and Congressional Democrats and federal investigators criticizing conflict of interest among its top advisers.
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According to a February 2008 Orange study, 21% of UK parents have created a social networking profile for their newborn bundle of joy within minutes of delivery. Babies are also apparently expected to strike a pose. One out of five responding UK parents said they snapped and sent photos of infants to family and friends within the first 10 minutes of life. Nearly half did so within an hour.
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Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008
in YouTube, video, children and books.
Kids across the United States in Grades 1–6 are invited to participate in a national contest. They can make a two-minute video about their favorite book, upload it to YouTube, go to the StoryTubes website, and submit a link to the uploaded video using the contest entry form before April 20. The four winners in each genre category will win $500 in books and select a school, library, or educational association to receive $1,000 in books
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Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008
in demographics, children, internet and MySpace.
A generation of children are effectively being “raised online”, spending most of their free time on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, a report warns today. It says that many under-16s spend more than 20 hours a week glued to the internet, three times higher than official estimates. With millions left to surf the web on their own, 57 per cent of children have seen online pornography, most of it accidentally in the form of “pop-up” adverts.
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Published by rwatstein February 5th, 2008
in web sites and children.
ALSC has added 35 websites to its Great Web Sites for Kids page, Great Web Sites for Kids (GWS) features links to valuable Web sites of interest to children, organized by subject headings such as animals; literature and languages; sciences; the arts; and history and biography. There is also a special section with sites of interest to parents, caregivers and teachers and an area devoted to sites in Spanish. The ALSC Great Web Sites for Kids Committee maintains and updates the site.
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Great Web Sites for Kids web site
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Published by rwatstein January 26th, 2008
in demographics, children and digital.
Children are voracious consumers of digital content, according to an NPD Group report titled “Kids and Digital Content.” The survey tracked the usage of entertainment content (physical and digital) among children on computers, video game systems, portable music players and mobile phones. It found that kids ages 2 to 14 are consuming digital content anywhere from three to seven times a month on a single device.
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Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008
in children and awards.
The John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature was awarded on Monday to “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village,” by Laura Amy Schlitz. The American Library Association announced the prize at its midwinter meeting in Philadelphia. The book, a series of monologues and dialogues about characters in the Middle Ages, is illustrated by Robert Byrd and published by Candlewick Press. Its format is different from the more traditional novels that have characterized past Newbery winners.
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To paraphrase comic Rodney Dangerfield, school librarians say they don’t get no respect. But if changes proposed at the Illinois State Board of Education are approved, school librarians could get a boost in their status and role in education, local librarians say. The proposed changes, based on the research, would require school districts to have a certified media specialist – a librarian – as well as a library in every school. “Higher test scores will result if kids have access to a certified school librarian and a well-stocked school library,” said Pamela Kramer, director of educational services for the DuPage Library System, which is based in Geneva.
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Published by rwatstein January 5th, 2008
in children and Library of Congress.
Jon Scieszka, author of “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales” and the “Time Warp Trio” series, will get the imprimatur of the Library of Congress today as the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. “We think it’s very important to have an evangelist for reading,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. The library’s Center for the Book has teamed up with the Children’s Book Council, a publishing industry trade association, to create the national ambassador program.
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Published by rwatstein December 29th, 2007
in children and virtual worlds.
Parents: It’s almost 2008. Do you know where your kids are playing with their toys? Increasingly, it’ll be online. A growing number of online tie-ins to toys like Barbie, collectible trading card games and even stuffed animals are joining established kids-geared online communities to create what will soon become hundreds of social networks and virtual worlds for children.
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Published by rwatstein December 29th, 2007
in children and internet.
My daughter has finally discovered the joys of the Web. Not surprisingly, her interests have nothing to do with checking email, catching up with the news, blogging, or surfing to other text-based sites — the stuff that I like to do. Rather, what’s caught her fancy in the past few weeks are sites with visual appeal and entertainment. She plays Curious George games on PBSKids.org and has really latched onto Webkinz World, the kids-oriented virtual world that involves real-world stuffed animals, contact with friends, and the purchase of virtual goods. She also likes watching videos on YouTube, but her younger brother is even more active, locating scores of videos related to roller coasters, model trains, and Lightning McQueen.
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Published by rwatstein December 22nd, 2007
in libraries and children.
These days, Mathe and Lesand meet almost daily at the library, Mathe is now the librarian. Lesand is, quite possibly, the township’s most enthusiastic card-carrying toy-library member. “Today, I would like to borrow …” The little girl clasps her hands behind her tattered red wool sweater, squints as she assesses her choices and leans in, conspiratorial-like, toward Mathe, “a puzzle!” An excellent choice, replies the librarian.
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Published by rwatstein December 22nd, 2007
in children and books.
It can be hard to find discussion guides for children’s books on the Web. With more and more parents leading children’s book groups or parent/child book clubs, there is an increasing desire for discussion guides for kids’ books. Luckily, librarians, publishers, and booklovers are making more guides available online. These are some resources that help parent book leaders find discussion questions for children’s books for their clubs.
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Published by rwatstein December 22nd, 2007
in education, children and literacy.
An important complement to reading, writing and research is information literacy — knowing how to find and assess information and applying it to the subject at hand. According to the American Library Association’s Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, “To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use (it) effectively.” These skills have always been important, but today — because it’s so easy for almost anyone to produce printed information, because of the abundance of biased information sources (particularly online), and because of the difficulty of sifting the reliable from the unreliable — information literacy is critical to becoming a good reader.
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Published by rwatstein December 9th, 2007
in web 2.0, children and museums.
At children’s museums, visitors ARE participants. It’s hard to fool yourself into thinking you define the museum experience when your visitors are jumping on, chewing, and giggling at your content. Children don’t have the same social hang-ups as adults and are likely to share their experience with strangers while in the museum. Visitors use the exhibits as owners and come back to reuse again and again. Finally, children’s museums are the original home of user-generated content, from face-paintings to puppet shows to take-home projects. However, with an audience of mostly young children and families in primarily non-collecting hands-on museums, most of them small, what are the best web strategies?
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Published by rwatstein November 12th, 2007
in education and children.
With a team of four women, Innovation Technology Enterprise Africa Investments has taken 100 young people with very few prospects of a future in business and turned them into aspiring businesspeople. The company’s chief executive, Reinhuld Niebuhr, said the business was a unique combination of a franchise, a co-operative and a business network that would ensure success for the young members, aged between 18 and 25.
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Published by rwatstein November 3rd, 2007
in libraries and children.
Students of 10 Chennai Corporation schools in north Chennai can look forward to a van stacked with children’s books and educational DVDs that will visit their campuses once a week. The Corporation, in association with voluntary organisation Innovative Network for Social Evolution (INFORSE), launched its mobile library project recently.
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Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007
in children, literacy and virtual worlds.
Virtual worlds have been attracting a huge amount of interest this year, driven by the success of Second Life, World of Warcraft, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and a host of others that have hit the headlines. When faced with something so shiny, baffling and new it is reassuring to see that imaginative artists have always intuitively understood both the charms and the dangers of leaving this world for another. Children’s writers in particular have made it their business to dramatise the process of imaginative escape into other worlds, and so children’s literature is full of that liminal moment when a child crosses the threshold and leaves the safe, ordered world they know for some strange new world in which everything is entirely different.
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Published by rwatstein September 29th, 2007
in social sites, children and Facebook.
Facebook, the second-largest social-networking site, must respond within “a few weeks” to requests by state attorneys general that it do more to protect kids from sexual predators, says Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. “If Facebook slams the door, we would consider legal options,” says Blumenthal, who has negotiated with Facebook. He says the company must verify users’ ages, among other things, and he expects a response within a month.
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At the beginning of this summer’s reading program for kids at Manross Library in Bristol, CT, Maureen Eaton, assistant branch manager, had kids sign a contract with her to read every day during the summer session, and if they did, she would color her reddish hair purple.
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Published by rwatstein September 15th, 2007
in children, research and books.
Roald Dahl remains the most popular children’s author among young adults, a UK survey has found. JK Rowling, whose first Harry Potter book sparked a publishing sensation when it hit the bookshelves 10 years ago, is only the fourth most popular author. Second and third place were taken by CS Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia series, and Peter Pan creator JM Barrie.
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Published by rwatstein September 15th, 2007
in children, virtual worlds and museums.
When you talk with museum people about virtual worlds, the conversation usually centers on Second Life. And sure, by some metrics, it’s the biggest, most fully realized 3D world out there, full of user-generated content, sex shops and waterslides, and a whole lot of buggy, experimental experiences. But Second Life isn’t the biggest, and it isn’t the fastest growing. It’s just the most open. If you want to see where the real action is, waddle over to the igloo. Chances are if you know a kid between 6 and 12, you know a kid who uses Club Penguin or Webkinz, or both. These virtual worlds are, as one father put it, “the cuddly G-rated version of Second Life.” And they’re booming. Club Penguin has 700,000 subscribers (at $6/month), about 12 million users, and was just sold to Disney for $350 million with a $350 million additional earn-out. And unlike Second Life, Club Penguin is 2D, highly controlled, and its primary users are too young to type.
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Published by rwatstein September 15th, 2007
in children, research and digital.
A new global study undertaken by MTV and Nickelodeon, in association with Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, explains how children and young people interact with digital technology. It also challenges traditional assumptions about their relationships with digital technology while examining the impact of culture, age and gender on technology use. The ‘Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground’ study has surveyed 18,000 children and youth from 16 countries, including China, India, Australia and New Zealand.
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Published by rwatstein September 15th, 2007
in children and literacy.
One in 10 parents struggle to understand the bedtime stories they read to their children, a survey by adult learning organisation Learndirect has found. Almost a quarter (23%) skip passages they cannot read or invent words to get to the end of a sentence, the poll found. A third of parents also admit to difficulties in helping their children with their maths homework.
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Published by rwatstein September 15th, 2007
in education, children, literacy and virtual worlds.
Like many 7- and 8-year-old girls online, Emily and Kayla Strickland are regulars to Barbie.com and the virtual world Webkinz. But much to their mom’s delight, the sisters also have been longtime fans of Starfall, an educational Web site whose star is quickly rising among parents, teachers and kids as young as 2 years old.
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