Author Archives: erin downey howerton

UnWholly by Neal Shusterman My rating: 4 of 5 stars The misfit trio from Unwind (2007) is back, and the Juvey Cops are on their tails. Shusterman does a great job of suffocating the reader with the same sort of tension that, one imagines, teens in this dystopian future feel. As an excellent source ofContinue reading “UnWholly by Neal Shusterman”

I don’t often blog about books and writing here.  Definitely not as often as I blog about online issues, or educational stuff, or similar.  But I’d like to change that, especially considering the debate that’s been going on online.  I think it’s rather puerile to reduce it to a hashtag like #arcgate or “librarians vs.Continue reading “The other side of hybridity”

I remember the first time I heard this quote from Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock: The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Amazing, yes? I ran out to get the book and when I read the copyright date I nearlyContinue reading “Yesterday’s urgency, tomorrow’s failure? (I hope not)”

The internet is a wild and woolly place – the entire world lives online in ways that defy traditional ideas of jurisdiction, which in the 20th century and earlier we defined as a physical location.  With the rise of participation on the web, things get very complicated when people in any country attempt to legislateContinue reading “SOPA & PIPA: Why are my favorite sites blacked out today?”

In the larger scope of things, it’s trivial.  But it’s fast become one of my favorite shows: Downton Abbey.  I’m a sucker for a good costume drama, and when I saw that one of the producers of Gosford Park (perhaps my all-time favorite movie ever?) had another lush upstairs/downstairs sort of drama in the works,Continue reading “What Media (Hasn’t) Done for Me Lately”

I’ve been fascinated ever since I heard about New York Public Library’s all-night geekfest, Find the Future: The Game.  Ostensibly, this is an event to celebrate the library’s centennial.  I think it’s also a grand and bold way to help rebrand the library and its historical holdings as relevant to today’s youth.  Here are someContinue reading “The Library As Game: What NYPL is Doing Right”

If you are a mobile computer user, bouncing from machine to machine all day long, then you know how difficult it is to plan for productivity.  Sure, you can use the cloud to store things, but aren’t you tired of using two or three different browsers?  Having to hunt your favorite sites down?  Worrying aboutContinue reading “Super Stuff on Sticks!”

If you have an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch then you already know how appealing they are to… well… all ages!  Parents, kids, teachers, friends, even the person at the next table at the coffee shop are all sharing and trading tips on which apps they love to use. Scholastic Parent and Child suggests 15Continue reading “Apps for all ages”