What Digital Natives Want From Their Library

Reading Rewards

"It's summertime and the living is easy" , oh too easy for children to forget those reading skills they honed during the school year. Now that summer is upon us, we as parents, librarians and educators fret about how to prevent "summer learning loss". After spending the school year advancing reading and study skills, how can we get kids to keep reading and engaged in pursuits to retain their literacy? Libraries offer summer reading programs, but not all children are able to get to the library regularly. What to do? Michelle Skamene, a Montreal, Canada mother who is a web designer by trade, took a pro-active approach and decided to challenge her children to match the amount of time they spent in front of TV and computer screens with time reading books. Her husband suggested that a web site for tracking time spent reading might be helpful to her challenge. And so Reading Rewards and its French language counterpart were born. And thanks to the social web, we can all use it.



The Reading Rewards website is very easy to use. Kids set up a free, private account which must be approved by a parent. Families determine together what rewards should be for a set amount of reading. Kids log in periodically to record their time spent reading and earn RR Miles for their reading (RR miles-- think similar to airline miles) which must be validated by a parent. But the site goes far beyond tracking reading time. They can also see what other kids their age are reading, write their own reviews, and get reading recommendations by age from a variety of sources, including the National Education Association, Coretta Scott King Book Awards, recommended by Parenthood.com,Parents Choice Foundation, Cybils, recommended by readkiddoread.com, Publisher's Weekly Books of the Year, Newbery Medals and Honors, Caldecott, and American Library Association.

Reading Rewards can be used on an individual basis, of course, but has the ability to create groups, making it suitable for use by teachers to manage a group from a single account.



Creating a group couldn't be easier. From the 'Groups' tab, click on create to set up a new group. Give your group a specific name that your kids will be able to find. Put in the start and end dates. Click on 'Create' and you will then be able to add the details for your group and put in a description and rules, if any. If you have a reading target (in minutes), you can enter it as well. Click on 'Apply changes'. You can also set up a default reward for the kids in the group (optional). When you are ready, click 'Publish'.

Once your group is published, just let your kids know how to find it. Tell them to register on Reading Rewards, and find your group in the 'Groups' tab. Once they've found it, all they need do is click on 'Join' to become a member and start tracking their reading.

Rewards can be set up as a group, or individually since some kids need more encouragement than others. You can click on 'Change reward' next to each child's name and modify their reading targets. By clicking on the smiley face next to each child's name in your group, you can send little messages to encourage them. These message appear in their news feed, on their public page.





If you want to have a list of 'Books I Recommend' appear on your group's page, simply click on the 'Add book' button and find the books on their Amazon-driven website. More about this can be found in the slide show.


Think about how you and those you know might use Reading Rewards to keep those kids reading skills in tip top shape over the long hot summer or anytime for that matter. And for those folk on Facebook, you can search an like their page on Facebook: Reading-Rewards.com.

Distressing News Stressing Library Staff

Library Advocacy Day from ALA Washington on Vimeo.

Me as the Dewey Decimal System ?

It was just too fortuitous that I bumped into this little quiz which purports to show you as the Dewey Decimal System. Your name is converted to a class in the Dewey Decimal System; That's right... somewhere between 000 (Generalities) and 999 (Extraterrestrial worlds) you have a place, and through the magic of internet this quiz can find it through random arbitrary letter decoding. Plus this gives a chance to mention how wonderful libraries are... don't forget to go read something, yes?

So I just had to take the test and find out where I'd be classified on the shelf by Dewey. The beauty of this quiz is that it gives you three choices and you can take your pick of the one that you like best.

Where do I Dewey? Here's the first result the quiz gave me;

Linda Wadman's Dewey Decimal Section:

864 Spanish essays

Linda Wadman = 29441314314 = 294+413+143+14 = 864


Class:
800 Literature


Contains:
Literature, criticism, analysis of classic writing and mythology.



What it says about you:
You're a global, worldly person who wants to make a big impact with your actions. You have a lot to tell people and you're good at making unique observations about everyday experiences. You can notice and remember details that other people think aren't important.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Or I kind of liked this third selection:

Linda Wadman's Dewey Decimal Section:

638 Insect culture


Class:
600 Technology


Contains:
Health, agriculture, management, public relations, buildings.



What it says about you:
You are creative and inspired to make the world a better place. You can work hard on something when it catches your interest. Your friends have unique interests in common with you.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Where Kids Can Learn to ' Be'

While I was reading blogs several days ago, I ran into a blog Carrie and Danielle: How to live an inspired life, be true to you, and make a difference in the world where this question was posed: What is your favorite cultural activity that doesn't cost money?

There were lots of answers to this post, but the one I liked best was from Frances who gave this reply:

"It's the Library for me! I can travel the world, explore new science, learn any craft or skill right from our little Town. Any one can jump on the web super highway with access to special data bases paid for by the Library.

The Library is a meeting place; a place of arts/crafts; of meeting authors and it's the first place our kids can learn how to 'be' in our community.

Libraries aren't the stuffy, hear-a-pin-drop kind of places any more. They are vibrant, engaged inclusive places.

They are communal places that are built by and for the community and reflect the community's history and taste."

I love that idea the first place our kids can learn how to 'be' in our community.

That perfectly describes my rural library and many more like it that I know. How does yours measure up?

Thing 14 - LibraryThing

Well, this one was really cool. After doing the retroconversion of over 100,000 library items with cataloging tools provided in various library software and OCLC, some of them not really easy to use, adding books with LibraryThing was as simple as falling off a log--maybe easier. I added fifteen items just to see how easy it really was. Nice that you can add tags to enable finding them that way too.

There is really a lot of stuff at LibraryThing, book discussions, groups, and more. Since some of the books I added were J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, there were lots of others who had them. I used the widget to put a selection on my blog, but it would be a great tool for libraries to use to put a special collection on their web page. It will be interesting to see how this site develops if they really are interested in cooperation with libraries.

I can see using it to make available the small collection of materials that NCLC has available for use by member libraries and putting it on our web page so members would know about them.