Packt publishing have a rather nice line in technical guides to a wide range of software applications, with a particularly strong list of open source titles. A couple of new titles look interesting, and I hope to include reviews when I've had chance to read them. 

Michael Badger's Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide, covers the basics of Scratch, covering some elementary programming concepts in the process: "This book provides teachers, parents, and new programmers with a guided tour of Scratch's features by creating projects that can be shared, remixed, and improved upon in your own lesson plans. Soon you will be creating games, stories, and animations by snapping blocks of "code" together." [Sample chapter]

Also of interest is a book, Mahara 1.2 E-Portfolios by community member and unconference presenter Glenys Bradbury and others introducing Mahara, the popular e-portfolio, blogging, social networking software that, thanks to single sign on with Moodle, is the platform of choice for many institutions: "This book will introduce to the exciting features of Mahara framework and help you develop a feature-rich e-portfolio for yourself." [Sample chapter]