RovingFiddlehead KidLit

Children's Librarian

Category Archives: Technology

OAKTech: Kids Teaching Seniors Technology

by rovingfiddlehead on April 1, 2013

A new library class series, OAK­Tech, Older Adults and Kids and Tech­nol­ogy. Fifth and sixth graders from the Lego League teams at Lemme and Mann are teach­ing monthly classes to older adults about Skype, Google Maps and iPads

Space Guitar! Live from the International Space Station

by rovingfiddlehead on February 9, 2013

Love this col­lab­o­ra­tion between Cana­dian astro­naut Chris Had­field, aboard the Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion, Bare­naked Ladies’ Eddie Robert­son and the Wex­ford Gleeks. Com­man­der Had­field has been very busy engag­ing with planet Earth dur­ing his time aboard the Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion tweet­ing, chat­ting with William Shat­ner, and, on Feb­ru­ary 22, the first Google+ hang­out from space. Submit […]

Coding Club Update

by rovingfiddlehead on October 13, 2012

Today is the sec­ond meet­ing of Coder­Dojo at the library. The first Coder­Dojo was a hit with 18 stu­dents Grades 4–9 spend­ing two hours busily learn­ing HTML5 and even a bit of CSS3. The men­tors threw them right into pro­gram­ming which seemed to work well. Quite impres­sive how much they accom­plished on their web pages! […]

Tech Club Offshoot: Coding Club for Kids

by rovingfiddlehead on September 10, 2012

Kids Tech Club will con­tinue as it did last year (six-week ses­sions focus­ing on free online tools for image edit­ing, ani­ma­tion, QR codes, etc.), but it has devel­oped and revealed another need. Space, age restric­tions and the stu­dents’ grow­ing skills mean that a follow-up oppor­tu­nity was needed. I sur­veyed the sum­mer par­tic­i­pants and learned that […]

Nonfiction Monday: Cool Circuits

by rovingfiddlehead on July 30, 2012

I enlisted my fourteen-year-old for this hands-on review of Cool Cir­cuits by Susan Mar­tineau and Nick Bushell, part of the Awe­some Activ­i­ties series from Wind­mill Books.  We had a fun evening with the exper­i­ments and some off­shoots of our own. My first crit­i­cism of the book is that it jumps straight into projects with­out an introductory […]

Image Editing for Kids

by rovingfiddlehead on June 5, 2012

I’m gear­ing up for the Kids Tech Camp in a cou­ple of weeks. That means it’s time to sort through my book­marks and favourite sites like Free Tech­nol­ogy for Teach­ers and SMS Tech Club decide what new tools to incor­po­rate into this ses­sion. The focus is on free, no-registration-required tools. Not because my library doesn’t […]

Youth Librarians Group on Diigo

by rovingfiddlehead on May 21, 2012

Keep­ing track of web­sites I want to return to from any com­puter or device has impor­tant to me for a long time. I loved and used Deli­cious for many years, but I moved my book­marks over to Diigo when it seemed that Deli­cous might dis­ap­pear. There are more oppor­tu­ni­ties for social net­work­ing on Diigo, but […]

Summer Switch: From Tech Club to Tech Camp

by rovingfiddlehead on April 5, 2012

Dur­ing the school year, Kids Tech Club met once a week for six weeks. Knowl­edge builds from one week to the next week so it works best for the kids that don’t miss many weeks. Dur­ing the sum­mer that doesn’t seem pos­si­ble with vaca­tions and camps so we are hold­ing it all dur­ing one week […]

Kids Tech Club Winter Session

by rovingfiddlehead on March 15, 2012

The sec­ond ses­sion of Kids Tech Club fin­ished last week. Based on what I saw as well as feed­back from both the kids and their par­ents, the kids had fun and learned a lot. Yay! Here’s what this ses­sion looked like includ­ing links to the tools we used. Week 1: Online Safety, Image Edit­ing (using Compfight […]

Weekly Roundup: Kids Tech Sites, March 5

by rovingfiddlehead on March 6, 2012

Want to see your face on a dol­lar bill? or Chi­nese yuan? or Nor­we­gian kro­ner? Fes­tisite Money makes it easy. I thought chain­mail (from a Magic Thief pro­gram) was a good accom­pa­ni­ment to Nor­we­gian money. This is the kind of easy-to-learn tool Kids Tech Club loves play­ing with if they arrive early. Kids are more […]