EdTech Review: Biblionasium

I remember geeking out over finding Biblionasium last school year in some random thread or blog post.  I IMMEDIATELY emailed every teacher that had 1:1 in my school (3rd-5th).  Amazingly, my mind was rational and I told them all I would love to collaborate and use this tool NEXT school year!  What?!  I didn't say right here, right now?!  Ah-MAAZ-ing!  That's what I think of that moment and the edtech tool I had just discovered.  

Biblionasium is a kid-friendly online book tracking site, similar to Goodreads for adults (friend me).  Teachers can sign-up for free and they can add their students or send a parent letter the site provides asking them to do that instead.  Students keep track of their reading, review books, and recommend books to others all within the privacy of the Biblionasium world.  Teachers can track reading logs, create goals, challenges, groups, and run reports.

This is how I'm beginning to use Biblionasium...
I set up a group to:

• share with students what I'm reading (I have a physical display of this in my library, too)
• promote new books in the library which I can share with teachers and students
• share books with Lexiles 1000+ that are appropriate for 4th-5th grade (and so I could get rid of the shelf on my Goodreads)

I'm looking forward to what others ways not only I can use this site, but all the ways students and classroom teachers will use the site during the school year.

What's In A Word? Books Without 'Em

Thinking back to The Fantastic Flying Books... by William Joyce, I realized how this animated short could spark a child's imagination.  As I've mentioned, the short itself has no verbal exchange of words, only music that sets the tone for the scene.  Just think of including this in a unit about wordless books to "jump start" the way students should approach that type of book.  The reader or viewer can tell what is happening without the spoken word, but they still get this deep sense of understanding.  

I am going to challenge myself to provide a unit like this to my students this coming year.  This will be just as exciting a unit for me since I love to go back and review what I've learned about illustrations.  I'm not asking students to make predictions based off the pictures or retell a formulated story.  I want them to look at a wordless book and tell me what emotions it evokes in them, what is happening, do the illustrations tell a story or poem or song, what is happening in their mind as they look at the picture (is the brain trying to make sense of the elements of the picture, is it using the picture to create a movie, is emotion welling up, etc).

So far, the books I would include are Picture This: How Pictures Work by Molly Bang, Wave by Suzy Lee, The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Journey by Aaron Becker, Flotsam by David Wiesner, Rainstorm by Barbara Lehman, Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie dePaola, Robot Dreams by Sara Varon (almost wordless), A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka, and The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.  Yes, the age groups for these books seem to jump all over, but I would use these books with 2nd grade and up.

Just imagine moving on to graphic novels after this... the two part analysis of illustrations and text/speech bubbles!!



Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / freedigitalphotos.net

Putting a Face to the Author: Webcasts

This past Friday, a 2nd and 3rd grade class watched a Scholastic webcast during library featuring the authors Dav Pilkey and Jeff Kinney.  It was part of their centers time, so they watched about 7 minutes at most.  The idea was to expose them to authors so they could start to see them as real people.  And what two better authors to see then two of the most popular authors in children's chapter books?!  The webcast was great because it featured children in the audience who threw out suggestions for the authors to create a story smashup.  



It was a very visual affair with the stage being covered with sketchpads for the Pilkey and Kinney to draw the characters, setting, and conflicts for the impromptu story.  This part offered students a chance to see the creative process in beginning a story.  The webcast intentionally stops on a type of cliff-hanger since the viewing audience doesn't know how the story ends, but that is where the process becomes interactive.  What a great tech-y way to present a writing prompt!  In the coming weeks, I plan on passing over power to students and asking them to finish the story.

Later this month, Jeff Kinney will be featured in another webcast for the big reveal of the cover, title, and color of the next Wimpy Kid book!  You can bet I'm signed up for that one, too.

The author Andy Griffiths will be discussing his new series via webcast, The Treehouse Series and I plan on having my 5th graders watch this one.  I already have the books on order.

My mom had a good point in asking me if I put these webcasts on my Only2Clicks site and I will be including ones that are easily accessible under the "Author & Book Websites" tab.  Typically, you have to register for webcasts, but I have ones that are available with the click of a button.