Bookopolis: An Online Reading Community

I love stumbling onto random websites that turn out to be super cool!  Does that ever happen to you?

Today, I came across a fun online reading community called Bookopolis, where kid readers (mainly ages 7-12 years) can explore new books, create a bookshelf, share book reviews with friends, and earn points for rating, reviewing, and book reporting.  The mission of Bookopolis is to ignite a love for reading and to connect kids with other young readers about books and reading.  Teachers and librarians can use this website (for free) to build a community of life-long readers in the classroom.  Students can connect with friends to share book reviews and also swap book recommendations.

Bookopolis is a free website (which is the best kind of website!) where educators can sign up, create classes and add students by giving them a username and password.  Educators and students can log onto Bookopolis from a computer or a tablet.  Once classes are created and students added, educators can monitor and view their students' Bookopolis reading activity (the reading activity information is below).  Plus, if a student had an account the previous year, the website will prompt you on how to merge their accounts so students can always have access to the books that have been read.

Let's dive into this website together to see what it has to offer.  I created some fake student accounts onto my educator profile to walk you through all that this website has for your students.

1.  Student Profile Page
Each student has a profile where they can do a multiple of things.  Students can create a "world name" (which is what their home page will be called), add their gender, birthday, genre preferences, and choose from a large variety of pictures for their avatar character.


2.  "My World" Page

Each student has a homepage which is called "My World" (or whatever name they change it to on their profile page).  "My World" is where students can see their reading activity progress.  It will show their total minutes read (if recorded...definitely an optional feature), total number of friends that they can share books ideas with, book ratings, number of books on his/her bookshelf, number of book reviews and book reports written, and their total points earned (students earn points for everything they do in Bookopolis).  Students will also have access to the books that have been recommended by friends.

3.  "My Books" Page
"My Books" is where students can search (by using an online search engine) for books to add to their bookshelf.  Once a student searches for a book, a summary of the book will pop-up, along with the genre, grade level, interest grade level, Lexile level, guided reading level, and a large number of  student reviews of the book.  Students can add the book to their account bookshelf and categorize it by "Reading It Now", "I Read It", or "I Want To Read It".  If the book is read, students can include the finish date, the number of times read, a 5-star rating, and a written review.

Students can also write a Book Buzz (which is a new feature that was added last fall) and a Book Report.  A Book Buzz is where students share a short book summary, a description of their favorite part, the reason why they read it, and why other kids HAVE to read it.  Book Buzz is basically a way to SELL the book to others. A Book Report is more in depth about the story elements of the text.  Students can also go into the class roster and recommend books to certain friends and give a short reason why they think their friend will like the book.  The recommendation message is then directly sent to the friend's account.

4.  "My Badges" Page
Students can earn points for everything they do in Bookopolis.  Then, those points will turn into badges.  Students can get 5 points for adding a book, 5 points for rating a book, 10 points for reviewing a book, 20 points for writing a book report, 10 points for inviting a friend to join Bookopolis, and 5 points for sharing a book suggestion with a friend.  Once a students reaches a certain point level, a treasure of badges can be unlocked and put on the student's Bookopolis page.  Students can collect as many badges as they can by adding, rating and reviewing books, doing book reports, and inviting and sharing book ideas with friends.

5.  "My Friends" Page
"My Friends" page is a way for students to view their friend's Bookopolis activity ("friends" basically means everyone in their class).  Students can view their friend's Book Buzzes, Book Reviews, Bookshelf, and Awards/Badges.

6.  "Recommended to Me" Page 
This page will show the reader the books that have been recommended to them by other classmates (or friends).  Students can click on the book that have been recommended and read a book summary and multiple reviews.  Students will have a chance to add the book to their bookshelf and categorize the book by "Reading It Now", "I Read It", or "I Want To Read It".

There is so much more to explore and I recommend you go check it out.  Unfortunately, I just came across this website and have not been able to use in my classroom with students yet.  But-I'd LOVE to hear what you think or if you have used it before.  Do you think this would be worth using in your classroom?

Here is a quick, 3-minute video on the introduction of Bookopolis.