‘Book Crossing’ in the classroom – and beyond
February 3, 2008
This week I heard about a wonderful idea to encourage the love of literacy within our students. The activity evolved from the concept of Book Crossing, where you leave a book behind to be picked up and enjoyed by somebody else. The book and owner are registered through the Book Crossing website and the book is traced around the world.
I heard that at a school here in Melbourne, a teacher recreated this concept with her class. The students drafted, wrote and published their own books that they left lying around strategically in the schoolyard. I am assuming a small message was placed inside to encourage the finder to take a look inside and read. Some books were taken home to share with families whilst others were shared back with the finder’s own class. The new readers were able to give comments on the book and add to a classroom blog.
What a wonderful way to share the love of literacy and have an authentic audience for the student’s creations.
Has anybody tried this concept or something similar in the classroom?
Entry Filed under: Web2.0, learning, literacy. Tags: authentic_audience, blogs, book crossing, literacy, reading, sharing.
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1.
propp | February 28th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Hi:
I came across your blog when I was looking to questions about using and changing the voki I made on my student blog. I wondered if you have used voki any further? I also wondered if I can ustilize the same visual but change the audio message? Do you know? Like you I am trying to stretch myself with using technology in the classroom. I have a blog: proppspropaganda.edublogs.org.
2.
helenotway | February 28th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Hi propp,
Yes you can use the same visual and change the audio. The save your new voki.
Good luck.
3.
John Pearce | March 25th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Hi Helen,
. Unfortunately the blog is no longer accessible so I can’t direct you to it.
A few years back I did just this activity with my grade 3/4’s down here in Geelong. The project ran just as you described, the students had previously authored and published books using Publisher which we then placed in ziplock plastic folders that also contained an instruction sheet about reading the book and making comments on the blog. The kids were super excited and we know that most of the books were found, read and circulated because students told each other. We were a little ahead of things though and there was not a lot of traffic via the blog
As an aside I also experimented with some of the students scanning the images from the books and then turning them into photostory based movies that were also placed on another blog. Again we were a bit “out there” and the blog didn’t attract as much attention as was hoped however I think the situation might be a little different now. I hope to encourage some colleagues I am working with to try again with both concepts later this year.
4.
helenotway | March 26th, 2008 at 4:46 am
Hi John,
Thanks for taking a look at my blog. I look forward to hearing how you go this year with the ‘book crossing’ and ‘photostories’. I can imagine your students would get a huge buzz out of reading comments about their books in their blogs.
Just by the way, you were the one who first got me on to blogs at an ICTEV full day workshop last year! Just wish I had begun sooner.
Cheers!