by Heather Moorefield-Lang, March 2018

Literature and literacy tools come in a variety of formats. Some focus on reading while others feature writing. So let me help you dive into the digital literature tools available: apps, websites, and resources that explore poetry, writing, reading, and more. All are free and offer a wealth of information for your students and faculty.

Poets.org: https://www.poets.org/

This wonderful site and online tool is brought to you by the Academy of American Poets. Poets.org offers a wealth of resources for those who enjoy reading poetry. This is also a great site for educators and teacher librarians who want to feature poetry and poets. Sign up for the Poem-a-Day feature or become one of their listserv or social media followers for daily poetry. Users can also browse the curated collection of poems and biographies of poets. Featured texts, books, audio, and video offer many opportunities to sink into the literature. Being able to search by poet, themes, and schools/movements is helpful as well. There is a section specifically for teacher materials, and educators can use the Poetry Near You feature to search for literary festivals and readings in every state. Overall this is a great tool for poetry research, library events such as poetry slams, and National Poetry Month in April.

Digital Public Library of America: https://dp.la/

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) makes resources from the country's libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions available to the public. Photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and many other materials are available for free and encompass a wide range of historically and culturally diverse collections. With DPLA, users can explore resources by topic, map, format, or timeline and, with a free account, lists of items can be saved and shared with peers and fellow researchers. This is an excellent resource for research, reading, and historical materials for your student and faculty presentations.

International Children's Digital Library: http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) has been around for some time. It remains one of my favorite apps and websites. ICDL was originally a research project from the University of Maryland, that now receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and Microsoft Research. The ICDL has created a digital library of international children's books, with two audiences in mind: scholars researching children's literature and children aged three through thirteen, as well as librarians, parents, and anyone else who works with them The ICDL collection has over 4600 digital books from all over the world, with approximately 60 languages represented.

The International Children's Digital Library has been around since 2002 and was a very early winner for the AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning. If you are not familiar with the website or app, the material is exceptional, and the fact that so many books in a multitude of languages are freely available to our students, teachers, and librarians is well worth knowing.

Write the World: https://writetheworld.com/

This site is all about improving high school student writing skills. They do this through community writing on a global scale using a guided interactive method. In addition to having the opportunity to publish on an international platform, the site helps student writers discover their voice through the writing process and work on their editing skills. This site offers materials for classroom teachers and school librarians to encourage writing. This is a great location for finding creative writing ideas, prompts, and more.