Thursday, November 26, 2015

Crowdsourcing Book Recommendations #CEL15 #NCTE15

I am continuing to decompress from attending the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and Conference on English Leadership (CEL) events in Minneapolis, Minnesota where sessions, keynotes, and roundtables were brimming with resources and book recommendations.  Throughout Penny Kittle's book-loving CEL closing keynote, I live-tweeted many of her recommendations, but I know I was not able to tweet out them all.









Penny Kittle (as well as Jeff Wilhelm, Carol Jago, and all of the keynote speakers) are so inspiring (what an understatement!), and after 6 days of the NCTE and CEL conferences, I am struggling to retain all of what I learned. While I know I can go to Goodreads or Amazon to find books to read, I get overwhelmed with all of the choices and reviews.  In an effort to simplify the process and capitalize on crowdsourcing, I created a Google Form for Book Recommendations.


If you think a book is worth reading, complete the form.  Quick and simple.  Notice this form does not provide a place for 5-star ratings or reviews. As Penny Kittle pointed out when we recommend a specific book, we are imposing our own thoughts on the person to whom we are making the recommendation.



Transferring this same notion to general book recommendations (not just for students to read books in class), the books recommended via this Google Form will serve as our digital stack. The spreadsheet results can be filtered by fiction or nonfiction, alphabetized by author or title, and we can then venture to Amazon or Goodreads to find more information on the text. The form and spreadsheet are intended to serve as a starting point, a quick list of recommendations.


Even if you did not attend NCTE15 or CEL15, fill out the form!  Thank you!




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