Tag Archives: Food for Thought

Google Launches Open Course Builder

It may be old news to some, but mid September, Google announced yet another of its new  pursuits. This new open source course building web application will serve the  growing list of K-12 and big-name universities developing online classes. Supposedly, the website is a lightweight vehicle to bring course material online, track student engagement (using web traffic and surveys), and evaluate performance. According to a TechCrunch article, Google is hoping that big-name universities, such as Stanford and MIT, who have started to put their courses online for free, will adopt this new  technology. TechCrunch, 9/11/12.

 

E-Readers vs. Tablets: Who Will Win?

According to SmartBrief on EdTech, e-book fans increasingly are reading on a tablet instead of an e-reader, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. In fact, the survey found that of those Americans over 30 who read e-books, less than half do so on an e-reader. For those under 30, the number falls to less than a quarter. The trend has electronic-paper companies, such as Taiwan’s E Ink Holdings, scrambling to find uses for their product as sales slow dramatically. What do you think, will e-readers collect dust as the tablet market takes over? Read the full article at Reuters (10/28)

Victory for HathiTrust

Judge Harold Baer Jr., ruled on 10/10/12 that online library/book repository, HathiTrust, was operating within the the boundaries of fair use while digitizing and making available more than ten million works to online researchers around the world. This is a major boon for HathiTrust, as well as the five universities responsible for building the online repository.

The Author’s Guild along with several other entities and individual authors had filed a lawsuit in September, 2011 seeking to shutdown the HathiTrust due to “…the systematic, concerted, widespread, and unauthorized reproduction” of copyrighted material.

Those from the library world, fair use supporters, and advocates for the visually disabled applaud the Judge’s recent ruling, believing that the HathiTrust is for the greater good — making materials more accessible to researchers, allowing for different and new uses for materials, and for opening access to materials for the visually impaired.

This ruling could have great impact on future library digitization projects. Additionally, the outcome of this case is expected to have implications on fair use.

Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/22/12.

Young Adults and Library Usage – New PEW Study

According to a recent PEW study, a majority (60 percent) of young Americans ages 16 through 29 frequent and utilize libraries. Most use libraries for conducting research, borrowing print, audiobooks, and ebooks, and for reading magazines and newspapers. According to the survey, high schoolers in their late teens (ages 16-17) and college-aged young adults (ages 18-24) are most likely to have read a book or used the library in the past 12 months. This is important news for libraries of all types, as it indicates a youth that is receptive to and familiar with utilizing their library.

Interested in finding out more? Be sure to visit the article for more details!

So, what do you see in your libraries? Are your youth receptive to the resources available at their media center or public library? How are they most commonly gaining access to non-fiction and fiction titles? Is there still a love for print resources?

The New iPad Mini and 4th Generation iPad

On Tuesday (10/23), Apple unveiled their new iPad Mini with comes in at a mere 7.9 inches and is expected to be a major player in the growing mini tablet market. Additionally, the new iPad 4 will soon be available. It boasts a new A6X chip that “delivers up to twice the CPU performance and up to twice the graphics performance of the A5X chip, all while delivering an incredible 10 hours of battery life in the same thin and light iPad design.”

A word of caution: Due to its small screen size, the new iPad Mini does not meet the minimum specifications issued by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) for the next-generation Common Core State Standards assessments coming in 2014.

Read more about the new iPad Mini and the 4th Gen iPad at THE Journal, 10/23/12