Casey's Contraptions are built into our iPad Games of the Week



If Casey was a real boy, he'd likely be an only child, happily spending countless hours in his toy-festooned bedroom dreaming up the elaborate physics puzzles you'll find in his self-titled Casey's Contraptions iPad game. You'll need a sharp eye and lots of imagination to line up bookshelves, soccer balls, boxes, toys, balloons, and other items to get the ball from the start to finish. It's all about trying things out and having fun, which makes it the perfect lead app in this week's list of top games for your Apple tablet.

Draw Jump takes the usual "tilt and bounce your way ever-higher" genre to the next level by adding bouncy, finger-swiping platform building to the mix, while Battle Dots brings a familiar pen and ink game to our mobile devices. Last but not least is iBLOBS, a must-play for fleet-fingered iPadders looking for a quick, free gaming thrill.

Read all of my Apple iPad and Google Android application reviews at Appolicious and Yahoo! Tech.

IPAD APPS REVIEWED

Casey’s Contraptions
You'll need a sharp eye and lots of child-like imagination get the ball from the start to finish in this spot-on physics puzzler.

Draw Jump
Takes the usual "tilt and bounce your way ever-higher" genre to the next level by adding bouncy, finger-swiping platform building to the mix.

Battle Dots Free
This kid-friendly pen and ink game (connect the dots into a box, score) makes its move into the mobile arena.

iBLOBS
The blobs are coming! Thankfully, you've got a can of blob whoop... cream. Have at them!

IPAD REVIEWS

Casey’s Contraptions ($2.99)

The App Store is littered with rushed, mediocre games. Thankfully, Casey's Contraptions reminds us what a professional-grade game title can offer. Namely, rock-solid physics game play that shines like the light in every little boy's eyes as he merrily plays with his toys in his room.

Only in this iPad exclusive, you'll take on the role of only-child Casey, happily spending countless hours in your toy-filled bedroom, lining up bookshelves, soccer balls, boxes, toys, balloons, and other items to get a ball from the start to finish. It's all about trying things out and having fun, while watching gravity and physics have their way with your setups.

With more than 30 toys and other objects to choose from available inside all 72 starter levels, you'll want to move quickly to solve each puzzle and score the maximum amount of points. That's because the built-in score sharing tools will let you post your best solutions to the Game Center cloud, enabling your friends to see your brilliant work. Plus, their successes are visible as well, adding a much-needed "call a friend" tipline for when you get stuck. (And you will, trust me!)

As you unlock new objects and tools to work with, they'll also unlock inside the game's built-in level editor. Soon you'll be creating your own devilishly clever levels and sharing them with the world, all through the child-like fun and wonder of Casey's Contraptions.

Draw Jump HD ($2.99)

I'm pretty sure I've played every "tilt and bounce an avatar ever-higher" app in both the Apple and Android marketplaces. They're fun, sure, but only to a point. Thankfully, Draw Jump HD is here to bring high-quality sound effects, fun graphics, and an entirely new game play mechanic to this saturated genre -- namely, adding bouncy, finger-swiping platform building to the mix.

Here's the basics: Take control of little Cosmo, a little red rocket that only wants to do one thing -- go higher! It's your job to finger-swipe below him, creating springy platforms for him to bounce upon and thrust him upwards. Along the way, there's items to collect, stars to slingshot-around with a satisfying gravity-boosting effect, and his smiles and frowns will quickly tell you how well you're playing the game.

The title's overall Japanimation theme is cute and emotionally over-wrought (read: perfect), with just the right amout of rewards and obstacles along the way to keep you glued to your tablet. You'll need to be thoughtful in your placement of each finger-drawn trampoline to avoid hugging the edges (yes, like I did), but it's all worth it as you soar higher and higher, watching your meter meter (yep) creep ever-higher. Just like little Cosmo. If you or your kids are ready for a break from traditional "jumping" apps, I highly recommend Draw Jump HD. Cosmo's waiting!

Battle Dots Free (FREE)

My family and I are serious road-trippers. Anything less than 8-10 hours in the ol' minivan is too short. That's why an app like Battle Dots is an absolute time-killing app that is now a permanent part of our iPad collection, never to be deleted. Ever.

If you have young kids, you've likely played this game on paper dozens of time already. Just like the real-world version, Battle Dots Free presents a field of dots to view. It's your job to connect any two dots on the game grid, all in an effort to fill a box (or two or three or more) to score points. The most boxes on the grid at the end of each round wins the round, and you'll grab a special trophy with each win.

Don't have a super-cool, iPad-owning friend (or parent) to play with? No bother. Tab the control to turn one of the four player slots into the computer, and have at 'em. If you think you're in for an easy ride, prepare yourself. Even the easy AI does a superb job of grabbing every last box with that final line aching to be finger-stroked. If you're looking for a perfect one-on-one app to play with your kids, you'd be hard pressed to beat Battle Dots Free.

iBLOBS (Free)

Download this free app and prepare to unleash some serious blob repellent on the invading horde of... blobs. Your little house in the middle of the screen is woefully unprotected from the menace of these multi-colored blob boobs.

Tap the screen with your finger to quickly spray sections of the blobs with some repellent. The blob will instantly disappear. And that's all there is to it -- a never-ending cavalcade of invading blobs (some fast, some slow) all of which need to be put down with maximum prejudice by your suspiciously Barbasol-like can of whoop... cream.

It's perfect for a quick finger-smearing session, anytime, anywhere.

ProQuestK12.com

The future of the library

Seth Godin, The Unquiet Librarian, Doug Johnson

Readers, first Godin's original blog post, then The Unquiet Librarian's insights. Worth a deep read for anyone with any kind of interest in our libraries.

What is a public library for?

First, how we got here:

Before Gutenberg, a book cost about as much as a small house. As a result, only kings and bishops could afford to own a book of their own.

This naturally led to the creation of shared books, of libraries where scholars (everyone else was too busy not starving) could come to read books that they didn't have to own. The library as warehouse for books worth sharing.

Only after that did we invent the librarian.

The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.

After Gutenberg, books got a lot cheaper. More individuals built their own collections. At the same time, though, the number of titles exploded, and the demand for libraries did as well. We definitely needed a warehouse to store all this bounty, and more than ever we needed a librarian to help us find what we needed. The library is a house for the librarian.

Industrialists (particularly Andrew Carnegie) funded the modern American library. The idea was that in a pre-electronic media age, the working man needed to be both entertained and slightly educated. Work all day and become a more civilized member of society by reading at night.

And your kids? Your kids need a place with shared encyclopedias and plenty of fun books, hopefully inculcating a lifelong love of reading, because reading makes all of us more thoughtful, better informed and more productive members of a civil society.

Which was all great, until now.

Want to watch a movie? Netflix is a better librarian, with a better library, than any library in the country. The Netflix librarian knows about every movie, knows what you've seen and what you're likely to want to see. If the goal is to connect viewers with movies, Netflix wins.

This goes further than a mere sideline that most librarians resented anyway. Wikipedia and the huge databanks of information have basically eliminated the library as the best resource for anyone doing amateur research (grade school, middle school, even undergrad). Is there any doubt that online resources will get better and cheaper as the years go by? Kids don't shlep to the library to use an out of date encyclopedia to do a report on FDR. You might want them to, but they won't unless coerced.

They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all.

When kids go to the mall instead of the library, it's not that the mall won, it's that the library lost.

And then we need to consider the rise of the Kindle. An ebook costs about $1.60 in 1962 dollars. A thousand ebooks can fit on one device, easily. Easy to store, easy to sort, easy to hand to your neighbor. Five years from now, readers will be as expensive as Gillette razors, and ebooks will cost less than the blades.

Librarians that are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario.

Post-Gutenberg, books are finally abundant, hardly scarce, hardly expensive, hardly worth warehousing. Post-Gutenberg, the scarce resource is knowledge and insight, not access to data.

The library is no longer a warehouse for dead books. Just in time for the information economy, the library ought to be the local nerve center for information. (Please don't say I'm anti-book! I think through my actions and career choices, I've demonstrated my pro-book chops. I'm not saying I want paper to go away, I'm merely describing what's inevitably occurring). We all love the vision of the underprivileged kid bootstrapping himself out of poverty with books, but now (most of the time), the insight and leverage is going to come from being fast and smart with online resources, not from hiding in the stacks.

The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided by a librarian who understands the Mesh, a librarian who can bring domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information to bear.

The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it's fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

The next library is filled with so many web terminals there's always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don't view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight--it's the entire point.

Wouldn't you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like that? The vibe of the best Brooklyn coffee shop combined with a passionate raconteur of information? There are one thousand things that could be done in a place like this, all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community and create value.

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don't need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.

The Unquiet Librarian's response:

Twitter is lit up today with divergent responses to Seth Godin’s post, “The Future of the Public Library.” I think Godin is spot-on with his thoughts and observations, particularly the idea that libraries “…ought to be the local nerve center for information.” Note he doesn’t see information only in BOOKS, but information in multiple spaces or “containers”, period.

Although he isn’t the first to do it, Godin’s call to reconceptualize libraries and his emphasis on the real meaning of “library” as being embedded in the work librarians do is powerful; Godin’s call disrupts the traditional precept of the library as being book-driven. I completely agree and if you read my blog regularly, then you know I feel libraries should be idea and learning-driven—that focus and our rethinking what the spaces of library and where librarians can be embedded in our communities is what can make us more central to the communities we serve and increase participation and equitable access to information in many formats by being willing to think outside the traditional “boundaries”.

Read the rest of her response; the K-12 insight is particularly important as media specialists are being largely marginalized, and their media center collections (electronic databases for one) being sustained for content alone and not the ever-important context of their unique interfaces to that content...

How do I imbue and infuse a bit of “librarian” into the work and learning processes of our teachers and students to scale out the possibilities for “library” and learning?

As I learned from our initial design process experience at our Reimagine [Libraries] Ed meeting in April 2011, it is not always easy to hear the “sacred cows” of our profession challenged by non-librarians, but rather than being defensive, this experience reminded me of Dr. Bob Fecho’s (one of the wisest teachers I had at the University of Georgia) advice to embrace the cognitive chaos and discomfort.

These kinds of experiences help me reflect and consider how to better distribute the “library” by improving our efforts to foster the participatory climate we’ve tried to establish in our library program over the last five years.

And finally, Doug Johnson's response:

"O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us", wrote Robert Burns. These lines run so loudly through my mind whenever I read a post that is absolutely dead-on about libraries, but more often than not, written by a non-librarian. Godin's Future of the Library post, echoing so many of the themes of the ECIS Library conference last week, is such a post. Read it, read it, read it.

While I'm not that concerned about whether librarians take attendance, I certainly am convinced that librarians must own the duties associated with teachers if they want to be regarded (and paid) as such...

Looking for hands-on help for tiring media centers and librarians to teacher's everyday work with our kids? Read ProQuest's own Carl Janetka's take on fostering this collaboration with electronic BookCarts.

It's about more than databases and content, folks. More at proquestk12.com.


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