Reading in the Wild Chapter 3

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Chapter 3 of Reading in the Wild is about readers sharing books and their reading with other readers.  My students share together when they read the same books in literature circles, but I haven't had anything in place for students to share their choice reading with each other.  I'm still figuring out edmodo, but am thinking this might be a good place for students to post reviews.  

I've been learning what a valuable connecting resource Twitter is this summer.  I started tweeting just a little at the end of last year with my students, but tweeting out to connect with authors and other classes to share book reviews would be a wonderful way to get students sharing with other readers and authors.  I learned from George Couros, a Canadian ed tech expert, at the Utah Technology Conference last spring that I could have students tweet from my account and just add the hashtags and student initials to the tweet.  I have so many things going on just with Dilly Dabbles, that adding another account would be crazy for me.  So, I just use tweet deck and have a student write the tweet, add his/her initials and the hashtags and then send it.  If you're really wanting to keep your blogging world a secret from your school, you'll want to set up an account just for your class.  I'm pretty out there now with my school, district and community, so I've just decided to go with it. You can find me and my class on twitter @dillydabbles.  Posts from my class will be tagged with #sierrabonitabears or #sierrabonita5 along with any other relevant tags. 

Ms. Miller mentions many other groups and websites available online as well.  Be sure to read this section to see what would be the best fit for your classroom.  

Another great way that my students might share their reviews is a quick video.  I do have 2 ipads in my classroom and should have 7 chromebooks this fall.  Students can record a quick review of their book and post it on our class website or to edmodo.  There are several apps that would allow students to do this without having to load it to a site like YouTube.  Fotobabble allows you to take a picture and then record a narration.  Students could take a picture of the book cover and then give the review. There are many other similar apps that could work for this.  Fotobabble saves the recording and gives a URL to access the saved file.  Students can share the URL on a blog for others to access. That could also be tweeted out or shared with other groups. 

How do you engage your students in sharing and conversing about reading?