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Screens, Spies & Student Privacy: Gordon Korman’s Snoop for Digital Literacy
07/23/2025
Screens, Spies & Student Privacy: Gordon Korman’s Snoop for Digital Literacy
If your digital‑literacy lessons feel stuck on the same old slide deck, Gordon Korman’s brand‑new novel Snoop (Scholastic Press, July 1 2025) offers a timely narrative hook. The story follows Carter, a phone‑addicted tween who—after two broken legs and zero mobility—turns police webcams into his personal feed and learns the hard way that surveillance isn’t a superpower. Teacher Take‑Aways Mirror, then Question. Use Snoop’s live‑cam plot to ask: Who controls the lens in your daily media diet? Empathy through POV. Have students rewrite a chapter from the watched classmate’s perspective to surface the ethics of surveillance. Data Literacy Mini‑Lab. Compare Carter’s police‑cam feeds to real‑world open‑data CCTV dashboards; chart what’s missing from each data set. Learn more about this week's guest: Gordon Korman is a household name in the middle grade space. With over 100 titles to his name, he’s written a book for every kind of reader in this age group—from reluctant to voracious and all the shades in between. His brand-new adventure: SNOOP is the story of a screen-obsessed boy who finds himself trapped at home—and discovers that life gets harder when screens are all you have. If Carter hadn't been checking his phone, he might have seen his brother coming down the ski slopes in his direction. And if Carter had seen his brother in time and avoided the crash, he might not have two broken legs right now. Oops. Now Carter is stuck at home for weeks, with both his legs in casts. Bored, he starts checking out the live feeds from police cams around his town. Before he knows it, he's obsessed—watching his classmates when they don't know he's looking and discovering some other very strange things going on that no one else is noticing. But what happens when Carter is found out... and the people he's watching know where he lives? SNOOP tackles finding a balance between screen-free time and being connected to the outside world. When screen-addicted Carter is forced to relate to the outside world only through screens he discovers that there’s something missing. Between being unable to stand up for himself to his classmates via Zoom to getting only part of the story through the police cameras, Carter finds that screens aren’t the perfect medium he thought they were. But he also manages to break up an illegal animal-smuggling ring and call an ambulance for a woman who unexpectedly goes into labor. The story, wisely, ends with a call for balance and moderation. As Carter says, “I took it too far. You just have to know where to draw the line.” Get your copy: Learn more about Tricia five week AI Literacy challenge: Use special promo code 'SHIFTING2025' to take $30 off by August 30th
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