Module 2.3: eResources: Discussion Forum: 2.3
Search Scootle for a resource related to critical thinking.
I searched ‘critical thinking’ and returned 199 results.
Utilising the ‘Advanced Search’ option, I refined my search on ‘critical thinking’ by selecting the years K-6 (which I teach) returning with 103 results.
From there, I chose a subject area from a side category that I am currently teaching: ‘Health and physical education’. This presented me with 7 results and a number of units across the grades.
Module 2.4: Selection aids: Discussion Forum: 2.4a
Select a curriculum topic of interest.
Select one of the online communities or resource sharing services listed in this section, and spend some time searching for tags, hashtags, lists or communities of relevance to your topic.
Share a link to a relevant online resource found from that community in Forum 2.4 and discuss the pros and cons of this community as a recommendation source.
We are currently working through the PDH curriculum at the moment with K-1 and discussing ‘courage’ and what it means to be brave. I believe we need more books with specific emotional language as part of our resources so I searched up ‘courage’ on Goodreads, resulting in 13548 resources.
I narrowed the selection using the ‘fiction’ category and the site sent me to a new search specifically on fiction alone.
When I typed in ‘picture books about courage’ I got an error message asking for ISBN numbers, which made me realise, I needed to do a broader search on something like Google Search and use Goodreads to pull up a specific book.
I chose Max the Brave by Ed Vere because one of our key words is in the title- ‘brave’.
I plugged this into Goodreads and it popped up as the first option with a 4.5 star rating.
Clicking in to the book title, I am presented with all the ISBN and Edition information a TL could want, along with alternate cover options.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22712981-max-the-brave?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=0FxO5bsODV&rank=1
Pros
- I was able to sort the reviews from newest to eldest and vice versa and filter to show the highest and lowest rated reviews.
- There is an option to ask questions about the book (there were none) and submitted reviews below.
- There is a ‘book data’ pop-up if you hover over the words ‘Rating details’ which allows a snap shot of the ratings this title has received before trawling through all the reviews
- Some reviewers seemed to be teachers who used the text in-class- these reviews provided information on how the book was used, received and suggested age groups at times.
- People can place their reviewed books on ‘shelves’ which group books of a like nature.
- There is a forum community on this site where you can ask for and discuss recommendations of similar texts.
Cons
- Some reviewers are social media-based book reviewers and more still are parents who brought the ‘cute book’ for their kids. Most of these were quite brief and not very useful in determining content, writing style or image content of the book.
- A number of reviews identified ‘Netgalley’ as having provided them a free copy of this text for a review- Would this skew the responses? Does Netgalley target teachers or just anyone open to reviewing?
- ‘Shelves’ are determined by the reviewers individually and can sometimes be misleading, not allowing for any kind of consistency amongst reviewers or collections- potential for rabbit-holes and tangents!
I would use this site for personal selection ideas, rather than professional. The process of locating new texts is simply too laborious and time consuming when there are other resources that allow you to do this all in one place. Additionally, some of the reviews are quite unprofessional and lack the information an educator needs to make informed choices.
Module 2.4: Selection aids: Discussion Forum: 2.4b
Select one of the crowd sourced review sites listed in this section or search for prolific book bloggers in the field and have a look at the way these reviewers discuss fiction relevant to school libraries.
Share a link to an interesting book blog, Goodreads or LibraryThing review in Forum 2.4(b)and discuss your thoughts on the value of such a review, and what issues there might be for relying on such sources as selection aids.
LibraryThing seems to be similar to Goodreads, which I am more familiar with.
Keeping with the theme of ‘courage’ I searched and came up with a much more user-friendly search engine page with filter categories down the left hand side. I filtered the search to Books and Tags which resulted in a list of tags, where I chose ‘children courage’. I was presented with 3 picture books all ‘tagged’ by the same reviewer. I returned to the tag list and chose, instead, ‘teaches courage’ an additional 2 picture books were displayed.
Book: Franklin goes to the hospital by Paulette Bourgeois
https://www.librarything.com/work/54639
Pros
Rating, stats and review numbers visible
Easy access of texts
‘Tags’ clear- leading to similar texts on tagged topics
Similar texts nearby
Cons
Some of the reviews I saw were just random numbers and prices. None were educational or professional.
In comparison, the reviews on Goodreads were much more thorough with a higher number of reviews for this text.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/605137.Franklin_Goes_To_The_Hospital?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=dltHaKVJpb&rank=1
Both platforms are good for general check-overs that the text is good for a certain purpose, or to quickly glean what a text is about but neither provide reliable, professional reviews of texts that I could see. At least, not with any consistency. Perhaps if you invested the time to find genuine, education-based reviewer accounts, you could better appreciate the sites for professional use.
