I looked into four online book communities. Each offered similarities and many differences and some advantages and disadvantages. Considering the age group of students I teach, I had to condsider which community would be beneficial for my students and myself as well.
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| Goodreads |
Why use online book communities?
Today's digital age offers so much at our finger tips. With online book communities, individuals can create their own personal bookshelves that they can share with their peers online, browse other memebers reviews, see recommendations, and search for anything in particular in regards to books. The individual can also offer insight of a book, make recommendations, offer other books that can be paired to certain books, and see what others had to say about a book.
As the owner of an account with Goodreads, I am able to see recommendations, view updates, create challenges, and create as many bookshelves as I would like. A screenshot of my homepage for Goodreads is below.
With Goodreads, I can look at what shelves I have created, see what the site recommends by putting my curser over "Browse"dropdown, as well as the "Community". Unfortunately, if you remove the curser, you lose the dropdown menu, it only will dropdown while the curser is hoovering over it.
With Booklikes, I am only able to select one item at a time with the dropdown menu. While in Shelf, just like Goodreads, I can see my bookshelves. Same applies for the curser when selecting dropdown menus. The curser has to stay over the dropdown menue to view all the items to select from.
Unlike Goodreads and Booklikes, Librarything's dropdown menu stays once you click on it. You can then select what you are looking for to move on to what you need to accomplish. Only disadvantage is you do not see the bookshelves on the side like Goodreads and Booklikes. You have to select the dropdown menu to find the shelf you want.
One advantage of Booklikes is that I can use it as a blog as well to post reviews or anything regarding my books that I want to read or have read. Goodreads and Librarything does not offer a blog on their sites.
Of all three sites (Goodreads, Booklikes, and Librarything), they all offered groups to join, discussions to participate in, and links to purchase books. Booklikes offers book clubs for members to join. Each set a time frame to read a particular book and discuss it with one another through posts online. All three also offer events that are happening for you to participate in.
Online Book Communities in the Classroom
Although each of the previous sites can be used in intermediate and high school classrooms, I found that BiblioNasiom was suitable for the elementary and middle school classrooms. There is so much an elementary and middle school teacher can do with this website. But it is not meant for all students. One disadvantage is the site only recognizes childrens books, so some intermediate and high school reading mateirals are not found in the "children's" books to choose from.
Besides bookshelves, a teacher can monitor Lexile levels, view reports, add individual or a group of students into a class, view rotating recommended readings, find resources and create a parent letter to send home to assist them in logging in to monitor their child. Just like readsquared and Xtramath.
The books I selected for my bookshleves on BiblioNasiom were for late elementary and middle school students. Knowing that I will have intervention students this year, this would be a great tool to set up for my students and help monitor and offer suggestions for them to read.
Advantages
All of the sites that I mentioned provide the same thing, some offer more, but in general they offer ways to display a digital bookshelf, interact with others online, and see what recommendations there are as well as purchasing the reading material of choice.
Many of the sites offer publisher information, ISBN, reviews of both publishers and readers, and many retail options for purchasing the book or links to navigate you to another site.
Educator
As our students become more dependent on technology and use it to research before doing or, purchasing (yes my students to do this), online book communities are a great way to share what you like to read, have read, and want to read. Just like this blog, my students can go to my online book communities and see what I had to say about a book they are interested in or look for recommendations.
Individual
Online book communities offer ways for me to look at recommendations, read and write reviews, join online discussion, book clubs and so much more. I am able to interact with other book lovers like myself. It allows me to research and see if a particular book is what I am looking for based on reviews and if so, I can move forward with purchasing or checking it out from the library.
Disadvantages
Not everyone likes the idea of going online to search or read a book, but would rather spend time in a bookstore browsing (I'm guilty of this). Some may not have the technological devices or knowledge to use such sites when looking for books to read.
The different sites
If you are looking for something that is colorful, has a lot to look at, then Librarything is not one to use. I personally did not like the site. I felt like I had to maneuver the site over and over to find what I wanted. I am also that person who likes visuals to look at when working online.
Also, not having a side bar or automatic dropdown menus may deter some individuals. I know that Ilike to be able to find what Ineed easily and want to be able to select or dropdown to see instantly what I am needing. I had this issue with Librarything.
The Winner Is?
I personally liked Goodreads. I liked how I was able to navigate easily and my homepage was visually appealing to me. I also thought my students would be able to navigate this site easily as well, as many of them have used Goodreads before.
If I taught or worked with elementary and middle school students, I would definitely use BiblioNasiom if I didn't already have one from our district. This site could go along with Accerlerated Reader if the teacher wishes to do so.
Thanks for sharing Biblionasium, I really didn't get a chance to look into it. But with your input, I might just have to give it a try.
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