Title: Frankenstein for iPad and iPhone
Cost: 4.99 (promotional)
Platform: iOS

Whether it’s the compelling re-telling by Kenneth Oppel, This Dark Endeavor, or Liz Burns’ TeaCozy read-along, Frankenstein seems to be experiencing a resurgence among both teen readers and librarians.

Now Inkle has developed a stunning iOS app based on the classic Mary Shelley novel but with a rather HyperCard-feeling twist.

Victor’s story becomes something of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure as the reader decides how to advance a conversation or even choose how to navigate streets at selected points which then determine the next passage. It’s an interesting slice-and-dice approach to a classic. The app also features the complete text of the original, as well as a gallery with the many anatomical images and landscapes used throughout.

As with many of the book apps based on older works, this project also suggests how you might work with teens to demonstrate how something within the public domain can be monetized and transformed into something original and compelling. I love the ides of teens creating their own variable versions of curricular texts as a form of assessment.

For more Apps of the Week, visit the App of the Week archive.

Title: Historypin
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS and Android

“Pin your history ot the world” is the slogan of this really robust attempt at immersive augmented reality. The app allows users to submit images and associate them with a specific location, linking physical places with past events for a searchable, world-wide database of place-based photographs, accessible through a place-based browser.

The app offers historical images as transparent layers so you can superimpose a current-day view of the same scene (from your camera or saved images) to highlight contrasts over time. Since the images are crowd-sourced, there is a mish-mash of public and personal histories, and contributions in particular areas are dependant on active pinners.
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Title: Streetmuseum: Dickens’ Dark London
Cost: Platform and first installment free; four subsequent installments $1.99 each
Platform: iOS

An enriched graphic novel, this app explodes stories drawn from Charles Dickens’Sketches by Boz: illustrative of every-day life and every-day people, to create a real sense of place from a combination of striking monochromatic art and theatrical narration.

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Title: The Survivors by Amanda Havard, Immerseditions
Cost: $12.99
Platform: iOS 3.2 or later

The Survivors by Amanda Havard is the first title in an imprint of iOS-only app-based ebooks exploding the text with a rich range of additional digital content. It is is a paranormal novel with teen appeal, following a glamorous, born-not-made vampire seeking information about her origins.

The enrichment is vital to the plot rather than supplemental to the 200-odd page “Immersedition.” The more predictable enhanced ebook aspects include associated audio tracks, Google maps, and twitter and facebook profiles for the characters, but the novel really excels in the fashion arena, with a range of sketches, runways photos, and catalog images to illustrate everything from a Burberry Prorsum jacket to a Thakoon suit or Gucci boots. (more…)

Title: Silent Film Director
Platform: iOS
Price: .99 cents

If your teens love the Instagram and Hipstagram for vintage effects for photos, The Silent Film Director application extends the back-in-time digital media porting to video.
The app might involve some trial and error to get the exact effect you’re after. You set the effects, the quality for export, soundtrack, and video time scale before importing the video.

The last option is especially fun, as you can slow down or accelerate video from 300% to a third of the original clip duration. Video effects vary from 20’s movie to vintage sepia, and 60’s and 70’s options are just-perceptibly tinted and appropriately grainy.

The soundtrack options include a range of built-in clips for nickelodean-worthy period sounds, but also allows import from the device’s iTunes library.

You can capture video from within the app, or load existing saved video files. The finished products can export at a variety of resolutions, from a mobile 192 x 144 to an HD-caliber 1280 x 720, with a caveat that better video will take a while to process.

You can share your magnum opus via output options include YouTube, Send to Facebook, Save to Device, or email. See a short example with Terah and Donald playing zombies.

Silent Film Director provides a super-easy way to get incredible effects for book trailers or other teen multimedia projects.

Name: Postagram
Platform: iOS , Android , and a web-based option through Instagram
Cost: Free application, each postcard is $.99

When was the last time you got a picture postcard in the mail? Postagram is a stamp-free solution to send your captured images to your favorite people with a few cicks. For .99 cents per photo postcard, users can upload their picture, drag and scale it to the heart’s content, and customize the message and profile avatar. It’s all captured on heavy, glossy stock with the image itself a perforatted 3″ x 3″ segment of the card, all sent to the address you specify. And without any scrambling for stamps.
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Title: Kindle
Platform: Apple iOS 3.0 or later, Android OS 2.1 or later
Cost: Free

When the July 25th update for the Kindle iOS app diabled in-app purchasing (to circumvent profit-sharing rules instituted by Apple), Amazon has added a feature many teen readers will love: support for magazine subscriptions.

While Kindle App users have had color covers and graphics for a while, subscriptions were limited to dedicated Kindle devices. Those ereaders have fans because of their excellent battery life and readable e-ink screens, but can be plain-Jane for many teen users, many of whom really appreciate the appeal of a color cover and are using their mobile devices for reading on-the-go.
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Title: 3:15
Platform: iOS and Android
Cost: First episode free, with subsequent ones 99 cents

App-based enhanced editions of On the Road and The Waste Land are finally pushing the boundaries of electronic texts, and young readers can have their own app-based literature experience with Patrick Carman’s 3:15 series.

The multimodal stories begin with a Rod Serling-esque narrative introduction, which unlocks a text that in turn leads to a video. The stories are creepy but never gory or gruesome, and they seem to tap into the terrors plaguing the tween psyche. Atmospheric music and visual effects are well-done, and the videos, while brief, are of high production value.
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The relativity of time and space might sound like a summary for the latest spate of YA dystopian novels, but it is also at the crux of a YALSA panel looking at distance issues and young people, Virtual Collaboration Tips for Teen Librarians, next week at ALA Annual.

Where: Convention Center Room 388-90

When: Sunday, June 26, 2011, 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Panelists include Elizabeth Figa, Associate Professor, University of North Texas College of Information Department of Library and Information Sciences, distance learning instructor and winner of UNT’s Outstanding Teacher Award; Angela Frederick, Teen Librarian at the Edmonson Pike branch of Nashville Public Library, which has collaborated with Metro Nashville Public Schools on the Limitless Libraries project; Beck McDowell, author of Last Bus Out, The True Story of Courtney Miles’ Rescue of Over 300 People in Hurrican Katrina’s Aftermath; and Erin Wyatt, Library Media Specialist at Highland Middle School, Libertyville, Illinois, author of dissertation “Middle School Students in Virtual Learning Environments”

It will be a lively discussion of what works and what doesn’t in terms of digitally mediated services in different sorts of settings. Come and share your own secrets for reaching teens outside your building and develop a richer understanding of teens’ digital lives.

Title: Crackle

Platform: iOS 4.0 or later

Cost: Free

Teens who want to watch a full-fledged flick on the go might have been limited without Netflix or Hulu Plus accounts, but Crackle offers a great alternative to catch up on full episodes of classic TV (Dr. Who!) and a large range of movies, including a small collection of anime.

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