I have the fortune to work in a school where children love to read and love books. That being said, however, they also love technology and gaming. They will ALWAYS choose to begin their research projects on line, and only on line if not encouraged to look elsewhere. I find myself increasingly conflicted about this concept, because I'm not always sure that we--teachers and librarians--should require them to go to print sources. I'm not trying to be sacreligious here, but I think our goal should be a different one. I think we should demand that students read deeply and thoughtfully, regardless of where they find their material. Right now, I believe most people do not read deeply when they read on line. I think we tend to skim over info rather than stop and think about it. With books, because there are fewer bells and whistles to distract us, we are more likely to contemplate the ideas, to pause, to consider what we are reading.
I'm trying to explore this idea personally by tackling a large reading project on line--I have begun to read Don Quixote through DailyLit. I'm getting two installments a day so far, although I may have to expand it if I hope to finish the book in the next year. I am finding it tricky to read in this fashion. I generally dive deeply into books, often reading them in big spurts. To have what seems to me to be tiny pieces show up in my Rss Feed on a daily basis is strange. I do find that I have to work to read, not skim; my brain is trained to skim whenever I am reading on line. So before I become a crusader for getting children to read more deeply on line, I decided I need to train myself. I'll keep you posted on this endeavor. I will say, though, that for me a regular book is still preferable--it's more transportable and doesn't ever need power once it's printed.
Here are some of the sites I explored and my reactions to them:
I set up a LibraryThing account during the original 23 things. I want to catalogue my whole personal collection, but have put that out there as a summer project. (My husband sees this as self-preservation should I ever have to convince an insurance adjuster that I really did own this many books...) I haven't played with it as much as I would like, but the site has a number of interesting features that made it fun.
As I noted, I am trying DailyLit. Since I do not have a cell phone with any bells or whistles (I had to be dragged into having any cell phone), I am reading my installments on my computer. Of course, being a geeking academic type, I chose a book the size of a whale, so I may eventually give up and read it the old fashioned way.
I looked at both Book Lamp and What Should I read next? in the next section. Book Lamp seemed severely limited in the types and numbers of books it had available to choose and recommend. I had my husband try What Should I read next, and he thought the site made some good recommendations based on his knowledge of their suggestions. I might try this with students if they are looking in genres I am less versed in.
Overbooked in the next section was interesting, but somewhat difficult to use for me. Maybe I just like browsing shelves too much to find a site like this one to be useful. I could see using it to help others find books though.
Booksprouts appeared to be a good choice for someone who doesn't have an active, local group of friends to discuss books with. It might be a fun way to share with someone out of town as well. I thought I could organize some of my friends from college and grad school to play this way. When I have time....
I love the idea of books being recorded and available easily. I plan to pass these sites along to our special needs coordinator so that she knows how to help students who need audiobooks find them.
My school has its own version of book swapping, so I am somewhat less interested in this idea. But I love the idea of releasing books into the wild through BookCrossing. My neighborhood seems to be a hotbed of released books, so I may have to get in on the action.
BookBrowse was interesting but I still prefer the NYTIMES book review.
I had already found the International Children's Digital Library to look for Hebrew books for my school. I liked Lookybook and regret its passing. I liked the PDFs of Tonight's Bedtime Story and thought that it would be great for parents who travel to be able to read to their kids long distance. Plus, for small schools with no money (do we detect a theme?), it is a fabulous resource for traditional fairy tales.
I had already used a book app on my Facebook account. I find it clunky with too many different things I have to click to get it to show up on my page. Sigh.
Basically, my biggest reaction to this Thing is that we educators need to do a better job of modeling and teaching how to read information on the computer. We need to remember that HOW we get the information should be less important that WHAT we do with it.
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