Bookji Aims To Boost Reading Fun, Engagement

The new platform is Instagram meets Goodreads in an try to make use of a secure social media mannequin to get children studying.

At T.S. Hill Middle School in Dexter, MO, librarian Miranda Foster was on the lookout for a option to construct studying tradition, to encourage college students to learn past simply answering take a look at questions. At the 2024 Missouri Association of School Librarians convention, Foster got here throughout Will Peters demonstrating Bookji, a platform he created to make studying social and interesting, utilizing features of social media to make reviewing and sharing about books enjoyable.

“This is what my students would love,” Foster thought. She and the ELA academics had college students use Google classroom to share books that they favored, however “it wasn’t as fun or as user-friendly as a social media site.”

Foster returned to highschool and proposed utilizing Bookji to the ELA academics. After satisfying the security and privateness issues of the administration and IT division, Bookji was launched with the eighth graders. This yr, the entire college—grades 6 to eight—are utilizing it.

“This has made it such a community, where they can share and talk about books,” says Foster.

Designed for grades 4 to 12, Bookji permits college students to create a profile, then submit a couple of e-book. Posts might be textual content, a GIF, ballot, e-book checklist, e-book cowl, or ­favourite quote from the e-book. Others can react with emojis, or repost or quote the submit. Books are tagged by grade stage and educators can set Bookji to solely present titles in a sure vary. YouTube e-book trailers or creator interviews might be shared as effectively, if that characteristic is enabled.

Bookji consists of options that permit running a blog for longer posts, ­note-taking, and a spot for academics to ask ­dialogue questions and monitor responses. It is accessed by an online browser on a pc or cellphone, however a cellular app will launch quickly.

Three years in the past, Jenn Coppock-Huegel was approached by William Paterson University, close to her college in Clifton, NJ, to take part in a analysis challenge on Bookji. She took benefit of the chance to check the subscription-based product at no cost, and the college continues to make use of it.

“I love that the students enjoy it,” Coppack-Huegel says. “They’d rather do that than write a book review on paper. They’d rather write the book ­review on Bookji than Destiny.”

The examine (bit.ly/4dwJnId) discovered that Bookji “impacted students’ reading motivation, reading engagement, social emotional connection to reading, and the influence of geography on their reading choice.”

Coppack-Huegel’s college students used a map characteristic that lets them study books set in particular locations to search out (and skim) a sequence set in close by ­Paterson, NJ.

Both Foster and Coppock-Huegel have had children come into the library searching for titles they noticed on Bookji. “The Keepers of the Lost City” sequence by ­Shannon Messenger turned notably fashionable in Foster’s college, due to a Bookji submit by a scholar who liked it.

“We had so many kids coming in and requesting the book series, we ended up having to order another set of them,” says Foster, who provides that college students who weren’t the most important readers are actually actively engaged, studying, speaking about books, and sharing their favorites by Bookji.

“We have kids that have been writing blog posts and responses about books that they love, sharing different books and ideas,” says Foster. “It’s just been so, so cool.”

The platform makes use of AI to examine for profanity, inappropriate language, and whether or not the submit is off-topic, based on the web site. This has induced some frustration for college kids who need to submit a couple of e-book that, for instance, has the phrase ‘murder’ in it. The submit is not going to be allowed. The objective of utilizing AI was to not require academics to learn and approve each submit, says Peters, who’s working to discover a resolution for the problem.

Bookji started as a school class ­challenge for Peters, who describes himself as a “typical reluctant reader” in center college who ultimately started to hate studying. In school, he determined to ­create one thing that modified the way in which so many younger college students approached studying.

“Our mission is to change the way that books feel for kids in school,” says Peters. “For me, one of the reasons why I hated books so much is [that] me and all my friends just thought books were super boring. Books were homework assignments given to us from our ­teachers. Any initiative done in the school was about getting a prize or a pizza party or reward for reading.”

Those incentives didn’t persuade Peters that studying was value his time or counsel to him that books had been attention-grabbing in their very own proper. They had been transactional—learn a e-book to cross a take a look at or win a prize. Bookji goals to alter that, and has seen some success with early customers.

“It’s kind of like Goodreads for kids and social media that they can use in school, because it’s absolutely appropriate and it’s contained within the school,” says Coppock-Huegel.

The platform is customizable, ­permitting faculties to resolve who can see posts—only a class or grade stage, the college, or the ­district. It will quickly add a characteristic that enables subscribers around the globe to see nameless posts if a faculty opts in to that operate.

“For schools that opt in, student privacy is fully protected—all identifying data stays inside the school, and posts amplified to peers at other Bookji schools are anonymous,” says Peters. “The amplification is algorithmic. We surface the strongest student posts so a student in Texas might see a great post from a student in London without either sharing personal information.”

Coppock-Huegel admits that it is perhaps prohibitively costly for some, however it labored in her funds. Bookji gives a “Book Club Subscription” for as much as 50 college students, which Peters calls “a low-cost way to introduce Bookji in a school and plant a seed for a better reading culture.”

Schools that need to roll it out to a complete college or district can inquire about pricing.