Goodreads

Good Reads is a website for reviewing and catagorizing books. It enables you to create and maintain digital bookshelves for the books you have read, are reading, or plan on reading. You can tag books for easy searching or create a new bookshelf for a separate category like for school books or books that relate to a specific interest. Once you have your shelves you can write reviews for books you've read or read reviews by others for books you plan on reading.

There is also a social aspect to the site. You can "friend" people you know or who interest you in order to have access to their shelves. There is an app to link it to your facebook page, giving you access to the shelves of those of your facebook friends who also use good reads. If you are interested in discussing a specific book, there are discussion boards or you can create an online book club to read and discuss a book as a group.

There are many practical benefits for goodreads in both the classroom or school library setting. A school or branch librarian could use it for a school or city-wide summer reading program since it allows students to review and discuss on their own time and remotely, if needed. The social aspects promote engagement, especially since it links to facebook, where a lot of kids spend hours daily. The facebook connection also is positive since it blurs the lines between the students home and school life, and homework and leisure time. The review writing process allows the student to generate content on the web for school work, something that he has almost certainly done before for personal projects.