While volunteers can be the backbone of a library, there's a fine art to crafting a well-oiled team of helpers, especially in these tough economic times when a nonpaid assistant can end up taking one's job. Case in point? Librarians at Bridgewater Middle School and Raynham Middle School in Massachusetts recently lost their positions, and parent…

Commonly spearheaded by librarians, Kindle pilot programs are springing up in schools around the country, bringing ereaders to K-12 students, who are cracking the spine, so to speak, on these alternative learning tools. From full adoption of the devices at Clearwater High School in Florida to tentative beta projects, educators are exploring how…

Between recent threats by a Florida pastor to burn the Quran, the nation's ongoing presence in Afghanistan, and protests at the planned site for Park 51, an Islamic community center and mosque set to be built two blocks from the World Trade Center site, the topic of Islam is a tricky one, especially in K-12 schools, say many educators. For…

Since launching in 1999, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, has grown from a band of 21 overcaffeinated friends, as founder Chris Baty calls them, to the more than 119,000 hopeful writers who joined in 2008. While most participants simply want to finish, 36 novels begun through NaNoWriMo have been published, according to its Web site,…

As school boards nationwide are forced to wield the budget ax-extracurricular activities are often the first items to go. Sports, art classes, and even field trips are increasingly rare. Still, children are curious--and so some schools are turning to virtual means to take students out of the classroom. This article briefly discusses virtual…

Sixty years ago, distance education probably involved a pen, paper, and secretarial classes conducted via snail mail. Today, students in ever-increasing numbers are more likely to link to the Internet to learn how to conjugate French verbs or dissect frogs in Advanced Placement courses, according to a new landmark study from the U. S. Department…

No state should be forced to make a Solomon-like decision between laptops and books for their students. Yet that is what appears to be taking place this year in Texas. The Texas state legislature has proposed a new law to outfit all secondary students with laptops at an estimated cost of $707.7 million over the next two years, according to Craig…

Keying in the search term "Martin Luther King" on Google would result in retrieving martinlutherking.com as the topmost hit. At first glance, it seems like a neutral informational site, but clicking on a few articles will unmask the hate. This site, which is owned by Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, references King as a…

This article briefly describes how 20 students at Libertyville High School in Lake County, IL, are billing the new peer-counseling program they launched online in January. Students are able to e-mail questions about anything that's troubling them without revealing their identities, and their counterparts get back to them just as anonymously. The…

What child hasn't chatted with friends through a computer? But chatting with a computer? Some Danish scientists have literally put a face on their latest software program, bringing to virtual life storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, who engages users in actual conversations. The digitized Andersen resides at the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in…