Web 2.0 tools and Social Media …

This month at Lovett Memorial Library, 111 N. Houston, Pampa, Texas, we are hosting our annual summer reading program — SRP, for short. One segment of the program is focused on Web 2.0 tools. Teens and pre-teens involved in this portion of the program are exploring several Web 2.0 tools including Inklewriter and Popplet. A central theme to this portion of the program is robotics.

This poor guy is our SRP robot!

The truly great thing about the Internet is its interactive applications that make presentations fun and lend themselves to fostering creativity within entire user groups. We at Lovett Memorial hope the kids involved in this aspect of summer reading will let their imaginations run wild while having a good time just being kids creating and making things.

The collaborative nature of Web 2.0 tools emphasizes their social slant; however, traditionally when people think of social media they think of such sites as Facebook and Twitter. For readers who want a better way to keep up with books they’ve read or books they’ve purchased and read while keeping in the social whirl, Goodreads (goodreads.com) is a great site.

Goodreads can be as social as users want to make it. For instance, Goodreads has a "friends" feature that permits users to share recommendations with their Goodreads friends as well as participate in online events with favored authors. Aspiring writers are also encouraged to hook up and share their skills and creations with other Goodreads' members.

Personally, this blogster loves Goodreads for its organizational features. This free site allows users to create a comprehensive list of the books they've read with the added bonus of a built in, 5-star rating system for each item. Not only that, but Goodreads members can easily access this comprehensive list from their smart phone or other app-driven device. Why, Goodreads users can utilize an app on their smart phones to scan barcodes of books to: a) add a title to their library; and/or b) check if a book is in their library as read. Check out Goodreads at www.goodreads.com.