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2015 Summer Reads

Our county Media Specialist, Susan Grigsby, has asked us to post a "shelfie" of the books that we've read this summer.  I remembered that I could update my Shelfari app, and since the books that I've finished to date all fit onto 3 shelves, I snapped a picture.  These same books are in the Shelfari to the right.  Just click through. ---->


I was trying to start reading through this year's Georgia Book Award Nominee Finalists for grades 4-8, but that was starting to get costly.  So, I looked at what books I could check out from my local Gwinnett County Public Library on my Overdrive app for iPad.  ALL of the books above are digital content downloads.  All of them.  Knowing that some of them would be returned as the days ticked down to the due date actually motivated me to finish reading some of them.  

This naturally lead me to reflect on my Follett wish list for the upcoming school year.  Almost all the books in that list are hardcovers with only one eBook because of the cost difference.  It has been so lovely, as a reader, to be able to put a book on hold, and then have it checked out to me automatically when it becomes available.  Granted, I can check out up to 20 books at a time and have a hold on up to 75 books at a time through my local public library.  The limits for students on our current Follett eBooks site allows only one book check out at a time, since we have purchased only about 300 titles for 1,000+ students.  Most of those titles are nonfiction, and very few are high interest fiction or popular authors.  It is highly likely that students do not check out more eBooks because there are not current, desired fiction titles.  

Based on the level of access to digital content through my local county library, I am going to start work on how to help my students get that same access through their local library.  I'm thinking it would be a win-win for the local libraries to up their memberships, and for our students to have access to so many eBook titles for free, thereby saving our school money.  (New lesson idea!) 

p.s.  Students did have access to Get Georgia Reading (a division of Capstone Publishing) eBooks this spring and summer.  GREAT site!  They also had/have access to StarWalk Kids Media eBooks too.

p.p.s. I don't post reviews on my Shelfari, because I prefer to post to my goodreads page.  More of my friends use that bookshelf page than use the Shelfari page.  I did give each book stars though.  I suppose I should finish out my Shelfari profile, but that's for another day.

p.p.p.s.  After showing this post to Susan Grigsby, (mentioned above) she shared that she and Dr. Bray, Chief Technology and Information Officer of our county school system, have already been working on the same idea!  They are trying to coordinate how students can use their registered student I.D. to access materials through their local public library.  So cool!  Great minds think alike!
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