Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

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Questions (not edit requests) > elementary students

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message 1: by Susan (new)

Susan | 3 comments I was wondering if any elementary school media specialists have had their students join and use Goodreads? I am looking for a site that students can review and find new books on.


message 2: by Dee (new)

Dee (austhokie) | 897 comments people have to be over 13 in order to use Goodreads, so I'm guessing that most students in elementary school wouldn't fit that - because of all the COPPA (I think) requirements. I know that teachers with older students have though


message 3: by Susan (new)

Susan | 3 comments Thank you so much for the info Dee!
Do you know if bookish.com would work?


message 4: by Debbie's Spurts (D.A.) (last edited Jan 19, 2014 02:01PM) (new)

Debbie's Spurts (D.A.) | 6325 comments I believe bookish.com is just for one of the big five publishers -- Penguin maybe? http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/... , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-w... and now maybe http://www.stockhouse.com/news/busine... (just random links that may or may not be accurate).

And, FYI, even kids 13-17 have to be emancipated or have a legal guardian's permission to join goodreads. A teacher is not usually also someone's legal guardian and I would be surprised to find a teacher was the legal guardian for an entire elementary school class unless a homeschool situation (which usually would not say so-and-so's elementary class or even consist of kids all the same age unless maybe they birthed triplets, quadruplets or quintuplets or did a lot of adoption or family blending).

I'd suggest overdrive's reading room for kids (ask your local library about), NPR books kids stuff, the youth arm of American library association, etc.

If just wanting to track their reads versus also social and reviewing side -- libib.com and tons of free apps and catalog software are available. Libib does let you share out a library/reading list and that's the limit of social activity so may let them slide around COPPA laws (I'm not even sure of that).

Personally, I'd make it a class project to develop reading list spreadsheets. Online, offline, or just on paper. With a huge caveat that parental permissions needed for anything online.

ETA: nope, checked libib terms and they also require you to be 13 and older.


message 5: by Dee (new)

Dee (austhokie) | 897 comments what about finding someone in your school, who is proficient with website development and doing something internally - that is probably going to be your best bet - IMHO


Debbie's Spurts (D.A.) | 6325 comments http://www.bookish.com/terms-of-use definitely says that Bookish also requires that you be 18+ (or 13+ with legal guardian permission to use the site).


message 7: by Debbie's Spurts (D.A.) (last edited Jan 19, 2014 02:20PM) (new)

Debbie's Spurts (D.A.) | 6325 comments Dee wrote: "what about finding someone in your school, who is proficient with website development and doing something internally - that is probably going to be your best bet - IMHO"

I'm not sure developing something would be necessary; there are a lot of open source spreadsheet programs including open office, google docs, numbers, etc. that would work.

What you would be missing doing that versus participating in goodreads is interaction outside of seeing other class members lists of books, reviews from all over, and chatting/newsfeeds from other participants.

If we're talking a U.S. classroom, anything developed is going to be subject to COPPA laws if it is online accessible. Which means, even if developed by the school and restricted to use by students with passwords -- still will have to have parental permissions to get to via internet versus just from a program on disk/USB stick or just on hard drive in the classroom. Of course, a website developed in school promising secured to just students in the class might get parental permission so that students 13+ could use. So I guess it depends on how old your elementary school students are. If under 13, parents would have to access website for them. Plus, in order for the website to have book data, someone has to put it in, or school would have to subscribe to various data feeds -- illegal to pull data from booksellers but legal to pull from publisher and library sites; if not manually pulling and instead wanting a data feed from those sources, there's a lot of TOS to wade through (for example, to use amazon data feed you have to link to amazon only on the book data page unless owned by amazon). It would likely be cheaper for the school to purchase academic licenses for a pre-built package like BookCollectorz than to purchase all the data feeds.

Not accessing via internet (particularly if only accessible on hard drives on the class computers) rather kills the social aspect. Kind of odd to be socializing using chat rooms and newsfeeds when sitting right next to each other in computers in class.

I'd suggest everyone just be given column headers for whatever spreadsheet they want to use, export it to csv file and write a program to or have teacher combine the csv files sporadically.


message 8: by Susan (new)

Susan | 3 comments What a complicated senario! I am a six week long term sub, so I don't think I'll be able to change the world. I like the inner spreadsheet idea. I just discovered spaghettibookclub which is a review site by students for students. We can access their reviews for free, but to add it is a school program that would need funding. Tuesday I plan on having the 3-5 grades look up reviews so they know what is out there and maybe the next lesson I can have them write their reviews on paper. Then I can post them in the library for others to see....
Unless someone has a better short term answer to my review objective?


message 9: by Chris (new)

Chris Blocker (chrisblocker) | 1 comments Haven't tried it out myself yet, but https://www.biblionasium.com/ may be more what you're looking for.


message 10: by rivka, Former Moderator (new)

rivka | 45177 comments Mod
This is not a Librarians Group issue, but one for the Feedback Group. Librarians can help with issues pertaining to specific book records or most related issues, but have no control over general site functionality or related issues. Closing thread.


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