Just when you thought the Interwebs couldn't get any more awesome, it did! How? Digital bookshelves and online book communities that's how! Why are these so wonderful? They do most of the heavy lifting for you!!! How often have you wished you had a way to catalog all of your books without have to painstakingly enter in all of your books? I know I put off creating a record of my books because there are so many, and I don't want to search for all of the pertinent information. But I also want to be able to easily see if I have this book before I buy it because I have a tendency to impulse buy books. It can get expensive when I buy books I already own. Another perk of these sites is you can connect with others who share similar reading tastes as you. You can also create communities for your students where they can share reviews and recommendations. Let's start with Goodreads.
I've been using this site for almost two years and it's pretty awesome. You can either create an account, OR you can log in with your Facebook account. By now you can guess which one I did. Linking your Facebook account to your Goodreads account allows you to easily find friends to connect with, so give it a go if you don't use your Facebook account to login. After creating your account, download the app to your phone because it has a handy scanner tool that makes adding your books VERY easy. It utilizes the camera in your phone to scan the barcode and locate the right copy of your book. I have yet to scan all of my books, but I will eventually do this. You can manually add a book to your shelf by searching for it by title, author, or ISBN. Once you have located the book in the catalog, you can rate it, assign it a shelf (or shelves), and write a review for it. I'm shelving by genre, but you can shelve however you want. You can also get more detailed and state the binding, condition, date read, and so on. Books owned or read are not the only books you can shelve. You can shelve books you would like to read or own too. Just like with Facebook, you have a news feed that shows updates from your friends. This is a great way to find out what others are reading, or have read, and perhaps find your next book. Also like Facebook, you can join groups to discuss books and/or get recommendations. I haven't explored much on this aspect, but I am a member of a local book club. Each month we have a theme and we vote on a new book to read. This month we're reading Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. Well, the group is reading it. I haven't started it yet. Shame on me. This site is great for older students (upper middle to high school) because it visually appealing, easy to use, but not kiddy.
The next site I would like to highlight is BookLikes.
This site is similar to Tumblr in look and is a microblog. You can load your library as with Goodreads, but this site is more about the review. This would be a great site for middle school students to post book reports to as it is in a format they are familiar with, and it is very visually appealing. What I like most about this site is I can link my Goodreads account to it. This is very nice because when I update one, it updates the other. I figured this out by accident. I linked the accounts and noticed that my Goodread account had shelves I had created on BookLikes. If you have multiple social platforms to maintain, you know how much a time saver being able to update multiple platforms when you post to one. It also provides you a button to pin to your bookmark bar to add books from supported websites. This is similar to the "Pin It" button from Pinterest. Not familiar with Pinterest? Don't worry, I'll talk about it later. As with GoodReads, you can link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to BookLikes. You can also synchronize it to your Kindle. Adding books to BookLikes is very easy, especially if you have an account on another digital bookshelving site. You will notice an import/export feature you can use to create a CSV file (similar to an Excel file) of your library.
This can be upload to other sites to avoid having to redo all that work put into one site. Why have an account on more than one platform? Easy, not everyone likes the same platform, so being on more than one (and linking them) will allow you to connect to more of your students and give some after hours reading advisory. You might also find some cool groups on one site that are not on another. Now let's forge on to LibraryThing.
This site I feel will appeal to high school students and teachers more so than the wee ones as it looks the least like a social media platform. Like Goodreads and BookLikes, it is very easy to use and you can import your Goodreads (or whatever site you use) library to LibraryThing. However, all of my books ended up in the YA Lit shelf I created, so make sure you check which shelf your books are being added to. At this time I have not found that you can sync your Library Thing Account to your Goodreads account, but you can connect it to Facebook, Twitter, and book swap sites (a discussion for another post). It will use your Goodreads shelves as tags, so you would not necessarily have to re-shelve all your books if you are happy with them being tagged. I am in the process of moving books since not all of my books are YA Lit. It will take time, but it will bother me if I don't. Another feature LibraryThing has is widgets/extensions. Below you will find a My LibraryThing widget that shows you some of the books from my LibraryThing. Neat right? Right! As with our previously discussed sites, you can join communities. I have joined the Hogwarts Express group, my profile picture ought to tell you why. Side note: I am actually wearing the outfit in my picture today since it is Halloween. I wanted to wear my Professor McGonogall costume, but I had to settle for just her hat since the dress currently does not fit. Next up is Amazon's Shelfari...
I don't like it, but I think kids will. I had a hard time importing my library because I didn't realized I had to save my file as .txt instead of .csv. I think I "uploaded" my library five times before realizing my mistake. The instructions stated the file should be saved as .txt, but I thought that was how I saved the file when I exported from Goodreads. This is most likely why I do not like Shelfari. It did however import books I had purchased from Amazon very easily, so it picks up some positive points there. The downside is I had to weed through the books my grandmother bought on her Kindle. Too bad I can't link my Nook to this account! The reason I think students will like this site is it looks most like a bookshelf. If they use iBooks or have a Kindle, Shelfari will be pretty easy for them to use. You will have to create an Amazon account to access this site. Be careful it doesn't turn into a shopping spree! As Uncle Ben says in Spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility." As for communities, I've joined "YA Books that Adults Should Read" because I like YA books. They're my "guilty pleasures." Sorry not sorry.
This site is definitely good for teachers and elementary age students. It is password protected which means the general public cannot see your, or your student's, activities. What I like about this page is the lexile level is included for your books. This will help you when trying to find books to challenge your readers. I know I tried to read as many "easy" books as I could to get my AR points each six weeks. With BiblioNasium, you creae your own groups and add students to it. If you are familiar with Edmodo, it's similar to it. You can create reading challenges to your students too, as well as buy books. It also comes with letters to send home to parents. You can use them as a template or as is. With all of these sites, if you are going to be using them in the classroom, parents should be informed of their use. Not every parent wants their students using social media, so it is important they know what programs their students are using and how their identities are being protected. Out of these five, Goodreads and BookLikes are my favorite sites. These two will work together and make it so I don't always have to go to the other site to update it. If you have another site, or have a reason I should use one of the others, let me know! Make sure you friend me on any of the sites you join!
We've talked about Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, blog readers, infographics and a few other nifty tools to help you create an interesting and desirable website, but we've mostly talked about ways to reach your visual learners. As we all know, not all students learn the same way, so it is important we take some time to talk about tools to target your audio learners. "How," you might ask? Simple, podcasts. Podcasts are recordings to convey a message. These recordings can be just audio, or they can be audio-visual. Either way, your audio learners will rejoice at having the ability to learn their way.
Creating a podcast is simple. First you are going to need your idea. It can be anything (Remember to site sources if you are using someone else's work to enhance your own). Some ideas are as follow: pronunciation guides for languages taught at your school, book trailers, instructional guides (research, using the library, etc), or perhaps you can podcast about how to podcast. You could create a poetry contest in which participants can record their original poems and share them with the school. The podcast be included in the morning announcements, and then a winner can be voted on by the school. The second thing you are going to need is a script to work from while recording. There will be some occasions when full improv will be acceptable, but most of the time you are going to want a script. A script will make sure you cover everything you want while allowing you to ad lib when needed. Now that you have your idea and script, you need something to record your podcast. There are several options available to you depending on what type of computer you are using. Mac users can use Garageband to create podcasts. If Garageband is not installed on your Mac computer, it can be downloaded from the Apple. The download was free when I accessed it, but it may not be when you go to it. Your computer will need to be running on OS X Mavericks in order to download this software. The good news is, it is also free! Don't have a Mac, or you don't want to download Garageband? Then there are some Internet based sites you can use to create your podcasts. These sites include
Soundcloud -limited to 180 minutes, 3 hours, of audio with the free version & no video if using it to record your podcast. You can find and follow other users in SoundCloud.If you have a Facebook account, you can use it to log in (you know I'm a fan of this). You can also download an app for your smart phone.
AudioBoom (a.k.a Audioboo) - up to 10 minutes of recording time per boo (post), unlimited boo uploads, direct messaging, the ability to create and follow various boards or playlist, educator and student accounts, and a lovely message from Stephen Fry once you join. If you do not know who Stephen Fry is, you must catch up on your British tele or Bones or watch the last installment of The Hobbit. Stephen Fry is awesome, but I digress. You can create an account, or you can log in using your Twitter account. You can also link your Facebook, Tumblr, and Blogger accounts to audioboom.
PodOmatic - Upload already recorded audio and share them with the world. As far as I could find, you cannot record your audio with PodOmatic like you can with SoundCloud and AudioBoom. You can login with your Facebook account or create an account using an email address. You can search for podcasts by genres. I recommend VIKING Cast to view examples of work created by students.
Make sure your Java is updated or you will have a hard time using some of these sites. If you are a Chrome user, like myself, you will need to add the Java for Chrome extension as the update from Java's website is not supported by Chrome. This can be found in settings.
I created a podcast to demonstrate how reading something, in this case a poem I wrote, in various ways can affect its meaning. I used Garageband on my ipad to record the audio, and then I uploaded the recording to SoundCloud. It was pretty easy because SoundCloud was one of the options available to me when I clicked the upload button. From there, I found a picture of a Texas A&M bus to use as the picture for my podcast because the poem I read was about waiting on the bus to go to class. This particular route had three busses leaving TAMU every 20 minutes, so I usually had a good chunk of time to wait if I missed a bus. One time, one of the busses on the route caught on fire and I was almost late for a midterm. This was my "motivation" for writing a poem about waiting on a bus.
Overall, the hardest part for me was getting the audio "right". I'm not 100% pleased with my end product, but I am happy with how easy it was to create and upload a podcast from my iPad. With practice, my audio recordings will get better. Go forth and cast your pods! Brittany
