Thursday, February 10, 2011

goodreads

I had signed up for goodreads a while ago and then never looked at it again.  But a few months ago I started writing down the books I’d read in a giant ledger book that I found at a book sale.  (Actually, my husband and I are sharing it; I started from the front, and he began at the back.  Since there are something like 500 pages, I don’t think we’ll run out!)  Anyway, since I was already recording my books on paper, I was more interested in putting them on the computer, too.  I entered a few recent reads and plan to keep up with both the paper and the goodreads listings from here on out.  I’m sure I can keep up with both of them; when I looked back at my ledger, I was surprised to realize that I read fewer books than I think I do.  Well, I’m a busy lady!

Now that I’m back on goodreads I wish that more of my reading friends were on the site.  I’m most interested to see what people I know are reading right now.

As far as educational uses are concerned, I think students in 4th and 5th grade—especially the avid readers—would enjoy recording their books and seeing what their friends and classmates are reading.  If they wrote reviews, that would obviously be a wonderful writing opportunity.  Goodreads doesn’t seem like an activity that teachers would spend time on during school.  The most reasonable use in elementary schools would probably be to introduce students to the site during a library lesson, and those readers who were interested could (and likely would) continue to visit the site on their own time.

1 comment:

  1. I think you hit the nail on the head with 4th and 5th graders. Goodreads can be a great introduction to social media for them that also has a nice content balance. How about a link to your goodreads?

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