I found this experience overwhelming at first. Because I have never used any of these sites in their true intention, it took some trial and error and fumbling around to figure them out and to then remember the distinctions between them as I moved from one to the other. Now that I have been working with them for a few days, I feel more comfortable and definitely have my favorites. Now that I have figured out my personal preferences, I can see the merit in using them as a teacher and as a librarian.
Book Communities Offer:
* a place to share
* a place to browse
* a place to sort and organize (in a techie way with so much more information available to you than you would have in a spread sheet you created to organize titles)
This last bullet is the most important to me. I have taught 1st, 2nd, and 4th grade. Floating around in my head are good lower grade read alouds, good upper grade read alouds, good books for the lower grades to read to themselves, good books for the upper grades to read to them selves, good mentor texts, not to mention the books I use with units. No wonder my mind is muddled all the time! I have all of this information floating around in my brain. I have considered making a spread sheet of all of this, but these Online Book Communities far surpass what I could do with a spread sheet. It is on my to-do list very soon, so really start sorting my years of knowledge into these websites.
Book Communities are also easy to access, free, and easy to use once you're familiar with them.
The title of each online book community is a hyper link and will take you to the website.
And then, I have to mention Skitch! What an amazing and easy to use app! I loved marking up the screen shots. I can think of a million ways to us that in the classroom and in my communications. Loved, loved, loved Skitch!

I really liked good reads. It was very user friendly. I was able to add multiple books with just a few clicks, and the program would generate books for me to look at instead of me having to try to think of books. Their generations were right on.
I found the book searching process to be tedious in booklikes, shelfari, and Librarything. I also found these three websites harder to navigate for some reason. They were very busy and had many features that I wouldn't use.


shelfari
LibraryThing
After the long process of finding and adding books to the last three websites, I found Biblionasium to be refreshing! The look and layout was much less cluttered that the others. And of course it has classroom engagement features that the others do not. I found it to be very easy to navigate and use. I will most definitely use this website with my class next year. I think the parents will really like the "recommendations" section. I also love that there is goal tracking, parent communication forms, and reports in addition to the friendly book organizing.
![]() |
And my Favorites are...
For My Own Personal Use: Goodreads
For School Use: Biblionasium
They were the most user friendly for me and they had the features I liked (like specific and tailored recommendations), and less of the things I wouldn't use as much (like blogging and social media).
No comments:
Post a Comment