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There's no real difference between ebooks and traditional paper books when it comes to kids' reading comprehension, says a new study.

Let me tell you about our Floor-etry. First, floor-etry is a poem on the floor. That's it. It's simple and vastly influential in the process of creating an early literacy environment.  We here at the Allen County Public Library  got the idea from Saroj Ghoting's website for early literacy. In a presentation put together by Dana Bjerke, Joanna Redman and  Kelly Wussow from the Hennepin County Library, you can flip through different slides and see inspiring ideas that make words accessible to even the littlest of patrons. We thought, "We can do that!"

And we did! We wrote a poem that is actually just a string of similes so the reader can start anywhere in the circle and the poem makes sense. We typed it up in HUGE, easy to read font, printed it out on bright paper and cut out the words. After cutting out the words, we laminated each one and added Velcro to the back for a temporary hold. We placed the poem in the front of our department in the shape of a (yellow) sun!

Evernote is a great web service and software application that we can use in education. A lot of ink has been shed on this topic and just one click in a search engine is enough to get hundreds of links to guides and tutorials about Evernote. I have been going through so many of these resources and have collected ideas, videos, notes and many more. If you are a loyal reader to my blog ( I am glad most of you are ) you would clearly notice that guides I write here are different in that they are simple. to the point, address teachers and students direct  need, and most of all written in an easy and simple language. In this regard, I am working on an ebook that will contain all the guides I have posted here so far but will be available for free only to my subscribers. Without any further ado, let us get back to our guide.

Universal Design for Learning. A categorized list of free technology resources to provide improved access and accommodations for learner differences

This page lists a variety of "free" software. Truly free and open source software is marked with an asterisk. Items without asterisks are no-cost proprietary software (for a definition of the difference, see this page.) Also see: Our Favorite Tools & Sites, and check out the free download for starving students at SoftwareFor.

To mark Digital Learning Day, we'd like to spotlight the work of librarians who are making a difference, leveraging technology and digital content to enhance learning. Below you'll find examples of their work covered in School Library Journal and here on The Digital Shift, along with links on topics of particular interest to our users: ebooks and apps.

APPitic is a directory of apps for education by Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) to help you transform teaching and learning. These apps have been tested in a variety of different grade levels, instructional strategies and classroom settings.

Do you enjoy reading books from and about different cultures?  Would you like to have an incentive to read more culturally diverse books?  Either way, the PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge is the one for you!

Fun idea, connected with the OASL Fall Conference! Not always buns and sensible shoes, librarians at various types of libraries have different styles (and dress codes). Check it out here or submit your own.

"Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers' favorite books (more than 75,000 different titles so far, and more than a million reader recommendations) to provide book recommendations and suggestions for what to read next."