Thursday, February 28, 2013

Social networking and young adult readers

I recently wrote about Book Drum, a reading promotion and social networking site which I really like for my High School students. Today another one came through my PLN from Bright Ideas, a post about another new social networking site for readers, Bookish.
With a broad target audience, it is possible to limit by subject, including one for young adults and teens.
This site differs from Goodreads and Book Drum in that recommendations are supplied by publishers, not members. Recommendations are based on "more like.." and users can create their own shelves.

I am a regular user of Goodreads. I use it to log my reading and I enjoy seeing what friends are reading. I check reviews - with caution - for titles I am considering buying.

So I have added a new page to my Into Reading guide for my students - Reading and social networking sites. I have just links to three - Book Drum, Bookish and Goodreads. I will promote this with my English classes, and with a hit counter there we will see how it goes.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Reading promotion websites - SlimeKids and Book Drum

Yesterday I received a promotional email from Andy Fine about his reading promotion website SlimeKids.
Here's my brief review of it.


The site's creator is Andy Fine, a School Library Media specialist from Minnesota. He states that SlimeKids is"  a site built for students that provides easy access to excellent literacy-related resources, has a variety of reading-based games with bona fide educational value and contains a large collection of book trailers organized by year and by grade level. "

The target audience is middle elementary to lower secondary, years 3-8. The appearance of the site is simple, unsophisticated and would have  some appeal to elementary students. Teens might find it less appealing, a bit young. There is some advertising at the side which is not too intrusive.

Book trailers are accompanied by a plot summary and brief author biography. Not too much, which is good for the reluctant readership that this site would appeal to. Many of the books selected have high-interest levels that would hook boys who are reluctant readers. Grade range indicators for the trailers seem misleading. For example, Ship breaker, Maze runner have a keen readership up to age 16 here in my library. These are assigned Grades 3-6. There is an archive of books through the years, for each grade level, but this less appealing (copyright concerns using the covers?) and I found to be not age appropriate.

There is a lack of attribution that concerns me. Book trailers I checked out are created by others (found on YouTube) without attribution. eg. Ship breaker. Similarly, literacy games are embedded without attribution. The Authors tab and Book Reviews link to other useful sites, but are the Search engines and Reference pages appropriate or necessary? I decided not to share this with my secondary students on my Into Reading guide.

On the other hand, I do link to Book drum - beyond the page from my reading promotion guide.

The visual appeal of this site is immediately striking.
A social networking site for books and readers, not unlike Goodreads, pitched at a teenage audience. Unknown contributors build a set of resources around a book.
Bookmarks: page-by-page commentary and illustration of the text
Setting: description and illustration of the main places or themes of the book
Glossary: foreign, invented and tricky words deciphered
Summary: objective synopsis of the book
Review: subjective analysis and evaluation of the book
Author: biographical information, interview videos, links and photos
Readers can create a personal profile and begin contributing.

The site is hosted by Facebook, so that may present some problems if your school blocks Facebook. My school does but I was still able to access Book drum without impediment, although with some access warnings.

From the home page, links are provided to a number of resources built around common set-texts.Although not authoratative, I shared the resources for The Road with my senior English students who are studying this text. They provide some useful background information and the visual elements enhance the text. Video is also used, and music is integrated with Spotify, although not supported in some juridictions including Singapore.

I like this site and will promote it to my students for reading inspiration. For some,  the further opportunities to share responses and links and for online engagement with other avid readers will provide that dialogue about books that they enjoy.