Booktrack Classroom
Booktrack Classroom
Floyd Brooks
Improve your student's literacy skills with an awesome free application for teachers. This application is called BookTrack. BookTrack is a multi-platform application that allows teachers to create classrooms that will allow students to keep track of their reading progress. Overall, Booktrack is a good application for teachers to create additional opportunities for students who may be looking for more interesting ways to interact with text.
Booktrack Class is a free application that allows teachers to create classrooms built around books. It is very simple to get started with Booktrack. Teachers signup, create a classroom and just add students.
Pros
Free: Currently, the application is free to use.
Encourage Reading and Writing: This application may encourage students to take their writing more seriously, and even stimulate them to strive harder to become better at their craft as their work may be published publicly for the entire world to enjoy.
Multi-platform: Booktrack is available on the web and on mobile applications (Android and Apple). Additionally, Booktrack has a app in the Google Chrome-store. Therefore, this makes Booktrack very accessible.
Easy to Navigate: If you are familiar with online reading communities such as Google Books, GoodReads, and so forth, you will feel right at home.
Appeals to a Wide Audience: Booktrack has reading content that will appeal to students from Kindergarten through college.
Backed by Research: Booktrack has conducted and published their findings from various research as carried out in New Zealand.
Funded and Supported: Booktrack recently received funding to grow the platform. As a result of this, you can feel rest assured that it will not disappear overnight.
Increased Student Involvement: The application allows students to create their own soundtracks to go along with the readings available. Additionally, students can add their own essays and combine their essays with soundtracks.
Useful Tutorials: Booktrack has some very useful tutorials for users who are just starting out with the software.
Easily Add Students: You can easily upload a CSV file with the names of your students and Booktrack will do the rest.
Cons
No Text to Speech: The application does not read the books to students. This, I think, would be really appreciated, especially in the lower grades or with struggling readers.
Very Limited Selection: Currently there is a limited selection of books that are available in the store for students to read. With the recent infusion of cash from investors, no doubt they will be adding more titles soon.
Limited Research: There is research out there that dampens the claims made by the publisher, with some research even showing that background music with lyrics can reduce reading comprehension. Here is one research paper from the University of Indiana that throws even more mud in the water as far as background music and reading comprehension are concerned. You can find a wide range of research on this topic by doing a simple search. However, some researchers believe that adding music to a story that enhances a story will help in comprehension due to the fact that the reader will be forced to engage in repetitive reading to find ideal soundtracks to enhance the reading experience.
From the Publisher
Booktrack is delivering an innovative and engaging experience for today's generation of digital-savvy students, providing new ways for students to study and enjoy reading and writing. Booktrack Classroom is an exciting new technology that synchronizes audio with text to create an immersive reading experience. Stories and essays published with Booktrack include a customized, movie-style soundtrack that complements the story. Students can create Booktracks for their own writing and create a soundtrack from over 20,000 professional-quality audio files and share it with their classmates to read.