BiblioNasium, the fastest growing digital social network that supports and promotes the independent reading activities of young readers, today announces the launch of advanced book review features.
Children using the platform to catalog, track and record their reading can now also add their own voice in writing independent book reviews that can be shared with their community.
BiblioNasium’s upgrade is in direct response to requests from its dedicated community of librarians, teachers and students. The new features allow children to practice writing book reviews and recommendations, while providing their educators with valuable data and the ability to moderate and publish the book reviews. The new open book reviews supplement the existing review and recommendation features, which were done through preselected and screened comments.
“Educators and parents write us regularly to reinforce how the social and gaming aspects of our platform are fun for kids and are encouraging and exciting children to read more,” says Founder, Marjan Ghara. “In adding the functionality of open book reviews, we are engaging children on a new level, giving them a voice and a structure to think more creatively about what they are reading and recommending. Children also respond more eagerly to book recommendations and reviews from their friends.”
Specifically designed for children (K-8th grade) BiblioNasium, the recent winner of EdTech Digest’s 2014 Cool Tools Awards, has over 100,000 registered users and is growing organically by over 1000 a week. Its mission is to help close the literacy gap for young children by using the power of technology, social networking, gaming and strong data collection to encourage, engage and excite them to become regular readers.
Adele Schwartz, Ed.D. BiblioNasium’s Chief Education Advocate adds, “Our goal is to instill the habit of reading and to raise a generation of passionate readers. Many have labeled us as the ‘Goodreads for kids,’ but we go beyond the social, cataloging and recommendation aspects of Goodreads. We have added reading challenges, virtual rewards, online reading logs, integration with Lexile® to help select books at the right reading level, and also provide invaluable data and reports to educators and parents to support the children’s reading. And it is all done in a safe and private digital space”.
BiblioNasium was awarded 2013 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning by the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) and also won the Erudient Prize for Innovation in Global Education at the Milken/Penn GSE EdTech Startup competition. It was also recently awarded 2014 Literacy Support, Cool Tool by EdTechDigest.
About BiblioNasium
BiblioNasium, Where Kids Flex Their Reading Muscles, is a free social networking site where young readers connect with friends, teachers/librarians and parents to explore, share book reviews and recommendations. Among features that are specially created for young readers are BiblioNasium’s online reading logs, reading challenges and virtual rewards for completing the challenges. Parents and teachers especially trust the built-in privacy and child protection measures. BiblioNasium also seamlessly integrates Lexile® Reading Levels for tens of thousands of books so that site users can select books that are the right reading level for each individual child.
For more information visit http://www.biblionasium.com or contact info(at)biblionasium(dot)com.
