Online Student Book Club

Does anyone know of or use an online book club? I am looking for an educational site (as opposed to a general anyone can post books) where students can post the books they have read, write a review, discuss books, comment on what others have read and possibly link with students in other schools to talk about their books or recommend books to others.

I want something different for next year other than the book report.

Tags: Books, book, clubs, onliine, online, reading, reports, reviews, share, student

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Permalink Reply by TeachingSagittarian on May 26, 2011 at 1:48am

How old are your students? GoodReads & Shelfari are both sites that offer the ability to create discussion groups around books - write reviews, build "bookshelves" to track reading, and comment on others bookreviews and discussions. I personally like Shelfari but GoodReads has the ability to publish a book review directly to a blog, and it has an iPhone app that will scan the ISB Number of a book, add it to your "collection" and you can write comments, reviews, as well as comment on others' reviews all from your iphone! This may appeal to HS students. There is a clause in the Terms & Conditions about being over the age of 13 to join the site, but with parent permission, we have been able to set up classes in both Shelfari and GoodReads.

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Permalink Reply by Katie Muhtaris on May 29, 2011 at 7:52am

I used Shelfari in the past and I think it's a great platform, for adults. However, there are many groups with explicit content (both spam and legitimate interest) and they are very easy for students to get to. It caused more problems than it was worth. (I teach 5th grade, perhaps older students could handle it.) I have been looking for something similar that is closed, sort of like what Edmodo is to Facebook. No luck yet, and I would kiss the person who could make this website.

What I have been doing that has been immensely successful is using kidblogs. Each of my students has their own blog and they write a post about their reading every week. I used this to replace a weekly letter in their notebook. They LOVE it. They come up with themes, link books together, review books, and comment on each others posts. They LOVE having a real audience for their work. I'm using it as a forum to teaching writing and language arts skills, monitoring their reading habits, and sharing my own reading life. If there was a way that kidblogs could add a book shelf widget I would faint with glee.

I've also created small groups through Edmodo for students in literature circles. Also neat. If you have your class on Edmodo you could make a group that was specific to "book talk" for students to interact, post links, ect.