What a great and yet simple idea! Having public librarians "nominate" just published books for adults, tallying the nominations and then showing a top ten list for the month.
This idea has lots of possibilities for translation for use in schools.
Statistics could be examined to create a "most wanted" list of books at whatever level your school library is. Or your list could be organized by genre, although, with 10 books, it may not need to be. Students and/or teachers could write the book reviews. You could also have a "guest reviewer" like the principal who reviews a particular book, not nominated.
I have to say, I have also been enjoying using Good Reads. I can't believe I didn't join sooner!
I read up a bit on social reading. It makes sense that it would be the "next best thing". Combining social networking apps and books seems like a natural fit. You could easily host a Google hangout for a particular book.
For the first time, I have my own classes this year. We're reading Bystander by James Preller. How cool it would be-if I could release the chapters we have already read in class and let students comment and annotate, leaving their initials and block. Since my class is only 40 minutes, this would help bring the course outside of the school day, as time constraints are an issue. If there wasn't enough time for students to share, this would be a much better way for them to share their thoughts. Usually if time is an issue-I ask them to let me know what they wanted to say after class, but this isn't ideal, as it's either dismissal or my next class is coming in.
I think the students would enjoy reading socially and being able to reply to each other and give their thoughts about the text. I'm sure the author would find it interesting as well if they were able to peek in at reader's thoughts!
Additionally, it would also be fun for book clubs to use. At my school I run a formal book club, with teachers that we hold for fun. Not everyone is able to make it to all of our discussion meetings. Social reading would help those who couldn't make it would be able to add their thoughts when they have time to. Even if they weren't there, they could still feel like they were part of that book discussion.
Reading about Kobo's app makes me think it would be a great reading incentive for kids, esp. the badge you can earn for your reading. A platform like Subtext is like a "Pop Up Video" for books! That might draw in even more readers if they knew they would get little bon mots from authors.
The article: A Taxonomy of Social Reading was interesting to read-to actually see how you could expand and collapse reader's comments, and how the last one was addressed to the author, and helped him to make a correction in his writing.
I think I will figure out how to incorporate social reading into one of our book clubs! What a way to connect kids with books through technology!
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