Professional development activity: Analyse and evaluate a website designed for children or young adults

Website: HKEdCity |  The Top Ten Book Picks

Topic: Young people’s book awards

Description of the activity

This blog analyzes and evaluates a website specially designed for young people. The website for this assessment is Hong Kong Education City (EdCity). The company’s goal is to promote the use of information technology in the academic community to adapt to the changes in the curriculum.EdCity platform can be used by students, teachers, and parents, providing e-learning resources, professional development activities, digital reading, etc. It is an institution that can offer reading services for schools and school libraries in all aspects(Hong Kong Education City, n.d.).

One of EdCity’s events is the annual Academic Best Book and Best Author election. Activity Name: Ten Books Selection. This activity is annually by EdCity with Hong Kong Teacher-Librarians Association and the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR). It is divided into primary and secondary groups, and each group selects one of my students’ favorite authors, 10 students’ favorite books, and 10 teacher-recommended books.

This year’s Ten Books Selection activity is already the 19th edition. The shortlisted books are not limited to themes, and the content must be suitable for reading widely by primary and secondary school students and must be Chinese books (including translation works) published for the first time in the previous year. The winning books and authors were voted by all primary and secondary school students and teachers in Hong Kong, representing the new and most popular books among students in Hong Kong.

What did you learn?

I believe in the authenticity of this award because it was voted by students and teachers one person by one vote, which was enough to express the reading interest of young people at that time.
In addition, their book list is worth referring to, it is drawn up by a professional team composed of school representatives, writers, and publishers, so it is indeed suitable for students to read.
Indirectly attracting students to read by voting is also worth learning. Using the award as a driving force to attract young people to choose books they are interested in and share with other friends, so as to promote the reading ethos.

How was the activity relevant to your professional practice working with children and/or young adults?

This site is suitable for librarians working in elementary and secondary school libraries, as this is his primary target audience.
The reason why I chose to do this activity is that I am dealing with this activity at work. Since this activity has an award given to the most actively participating schools, it will attract many schools to participate. The more schools participate, the more representative it is. And he is an academic activity, so he can ensure the quality of the books.

What gaps in your knowledge were revealed and how might you fill those gaps?

Since my school students are not very interested in reading and are not very familiar with their interests because of the age gap. So, I wanted to use this vote activity to see which type of book or which author the students are interested in. It just so happens that our school uses paper voting, so I can easily collect their voting results and count them. In addition, related books will be purchased based on this result. I hope it can attract students’ attention and understand the interests of today’s young people.

Activity Poster

References:

Hong Kong Education City. (n.d.). Hong Kong Reading City – The 19th Top Ten Good Reads. Retrieved from https://www.hkreadingcity.net/zh-hant/content/10books2021