It was the “aha!” moment that Stephanie Rosalia was hoping for.

A group of fifth graders huddled around laptop computers in the school library overseen by Ms. Rosalia and scanned allaboutexplorers.com, a Web site that, unbeknownst to the children, was intentionally peppered with false facts.

Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned.

Most of the students ignored her, as she knew they would. But Nozimakon Omonullaeva, 11, noticed something odd on a page about Christopher Columbus.

“It says the Indians enjoyed the cellphones and computers brought by Columbus!” Nozimakon exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “That’s wrong.”

It was an essential discovery in a lesson about the reliability — or lack thereof — of information on the Internet, one of many Ms. Rosalia teaches in her role as a new kind of school librarian.

Ms. Rosalia, 54, is part of a growing cadre of 21st-century multimedia specialists who help guide students through the digital ocean of information that confronts them on a daily basis. These new librarians believe that literacy includes, but also exceeds, books. Complete  Article  Availaible at…

The Future of Reading – In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update – Series – NYTimes.com.

Skyfire social networking

Skyfire is a mobile web browser that seems like it’s been in beta forever.  That feeling won’t go away soon as the latest beta version has just been released, 0.9.  This new version of Skyfire adds support for new screen sizes on the Windows Mobile platform, WVGA and WQVGA, which means it will now work on the Samsung Omnia and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.

Skyfire is the server-based browser that can handle virtually any video streaming and that sets it apart from just about every other mobile browser out there. This new version is also adding social networking with the ability to aggregate your Twitter, Facebook and other network updates right on a convenient page.  From the press release:

The most noticeable change in the new version of Skyfire is a real-time activity wall which aggregates customized feeds from news, media, Facebook and Twitter. Skyfire is preconfigured with feeds from Digg, ESPN, Google News, Hulu, YouTube and Yahoo! News that display real-time updates on the start page. It is easy to customize your experience and add new feeds from your favorite websites.  Skyfire now always keeps you connected with the newest content that is relevant to you.

Windows Mobile is not the only platform to get this new beta as a new Symbian beta is going live too.  Owners of Nokia E or N series phones will be able to give Skyfire a good workout too.  Owners of phones on either platform can get Skyfire Beta 0.9 from the web site.  I have been running this new beta on the HTC Advantage for a few days and it works pretty well, although I am running RealVGA and it sometimes creates display problems.

Last year we interviewed the CEO of Skyfire, who gave us a glimpse of what this new version brings to the small screen and also where the browser is headed.

Gadget Gurus – GigaOM – Salon.com.

Doors reopened: Michelle Obama greets audience members at Ford’s Theatre, which celebrated Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial.

The Ford’s Theatre Society held a star-studded reopening to celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth and award film greats George Lucas and Sidney Poitier with Lincoln Medals. The invitation-only ceremony was held at Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

CBS News anchor Katie Couric and actors Kelsey Grammer, James Earl Jones, Ben Vereen, Jeffrey Wright and Audra McDonald gave a presentation of Birth and Rebirth, a tribute to Lincoln. David Selby (Falcon Crest‘s Richard Channing) portrayed Lincoln. Jessye Norman performed the Battle Hymn of the Republic with McDonald and violinist Joshua Bell. Richard Thomas (The Waltons‘ John Boy) was the evening’s host.

“There’s a lot of history in this building,” said director Lucas, 64. Lincoln “was a great man, and he served our country in a very difficult time.” As for Obama’s first weeks, “it’s nice that he started off on the right foot. Things are actually happening.”

Poitier, 81, was still moved by the election of a black president. “I never thought I would live long enough (to see one), which is an example of how far we’ve come,” the Oscar-winning Lilies of the Field actor said.

Grammer, a Republican, expressed support for Obama. “I support all presidents,” he said. “They have a very difficult job.” And, he said, “it brings a tear to my eye every time I see him on camera.” As for Lincoln, “he gave his life so that a president like Obama could come along.”

Jones, the Great White Hope star and voice of Darth Vader, talked about missing Obama’s inauguration, but added, “I figured I’d meet up with him somewhere along the way.”

Jones was right. At the end of the tribute, Obama spoke to the audience about Lincoln. “He had an unyielding belief that at heart we are one nation and one people. … That is what we remain.”

Ford’s Theatre packs in stars, and Obamas, for reopening

This past weekend’s announcement by Facebook that the company would be opening up its APIs to allow for posting of notes, videos and more has left some companies scrambling to add new functionality to existing applications. Below we’ve highlighted a handful of the ones that let you post to Facebook from a desktop client, be it standalone or something that plugs into your browser.

We’ve talked to the people at each one to see when you should be expecting to be able to make use of the new API in each app:

“Blogo already supports Facebook status updates through its integration with Ping.fm,” says Benjamin Jackson, Blogo’s technical director. “As for more robust Facebook integration, you can be absolutely certain that we’ll be running to integrate this as quickly as possible. We’ll be shooting to send out a beta next week.”

Friendbar creator Edo Segal says “we love the fact that facebook [is] opening up more services,” and “definitely plan to include support for these API’s in upcoming versions.” Segal also says he wants a higher level of access to that data. “For example, to be able to post comments to users photos and status updates, and to directly send a Facebook message to a user via the API.”

Posting of notes through Ping.fm is up and running. “We’re still assembling some other ideas on how to use their new features,” says founder and CEO Sean McCullough. Worth a mention is that many of the services on this list go through Ping.fm to re-syndicate user messages.

“Sociagami has always been committed to deep integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace and we will definitely be taking advantage of the new API features in 2.0,” says Charlie Robbins, director of social network integration for Sociagami. “Unfortunately, using an API based implementation will mean that Sociagami 2.0 will not have the messaging and wall posting features that came with 1.0.”

Working on it for an upcoming build. “The video part will be an important one!” says Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic which acquired/owns Twhirl. The latest version, which was released on Monday added in Ping.fm support, letting you cross post messages to your Facebook profile.

“Yes, we are actively working on implementing the new Facebook API and rolling it out ASAP,” says Regan Fletcher, Yoono‘s VP of business development. Our overall objective really is to maximize our use of the Facebook API in order to allow users who have added Facebook to Yoono to have the best possible experience and functionality.”

“It does look like some of this new functionality is available via the REST API which we use and we can run FQL queries (which we do),” says AlertThingy creator Clive Howard. “We will be revisiting this prior to the next version and if we can do then I’m sure it will make it into 3.x.” Version 3 of AlertThingy was released on Monday morning.
Apps that we pinged but have not yet responded: Flock, Feedalizr, Moodswing/blast, and Gwibber. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

Which apps are using the new Facebook APIs? | Webware – CNET.