Tagul going HTML5!

I must admit that using an iPad the past few years on Flash websites has been frustrating. But since I have not used iPads in my library until this year it has not become a school issue. Correction, I have on occasion brought my own iPad to school for various student uses but using Flash websites was not one of those uses.
I have spent most of this school year which ends next week signing out the iPad cart only for creation projects, not for research but some very important things have happened in the past year that will significantly change my use of iPads next school year.

First of all, I will have an iPad cart dedicated for library use. And second is the switch of many of my favorite resources to HTML5.

The number one shift has come from the PebbleGo Databases that our elementary schools use. PebbleGo is migrating to HTML5.  As you can see from the photo below the mobile friendly version is now in beta and it works wonderfully on iPads. The shift started happening around March or April but I found out about it during my annual state library conference the first week in May. PebbleGo was already awesome, now it is super awesome! No more breakdowns from students because the website won't open on their iPads! Thanks PebbleGo. I have touted the merits of PebbleGo to every librarian I have talked to over the past few years I have been using it and I have no affiliation with Capstone. It is just an excellent research database for emergent readers! It also ranked as a Stellar Database in School Library Journal's review of databases. Oh, and now Capstone is introducing their first database module (with more to come I am sure) for upper elementary students. It is called PebbleGo NEXT and right now it only has one social studies module which includes all 50 states and 11 American Indian tribes but the promise is there for so much more.

The next bit of excitement was Tagul's announcement in May that they too are joining the HTML5 ranks. That means that next year when I get my allocation of iPads for upper elementary library students that they will be able to research the 50 states and create a Tagul in the shape of the state they find information about. Little things like this make a difference with 800 students!