2016 Appy Hour

Taking reading online? There’s an app for that! Join us as we meld the world of reading and technology. There are lots of great apps out there to help you encourage reading, track your reading, create lists for your reading and interact with your good old fashioned paper books in a 21st century way. Participants shared their favorite apps (or sites) they are already using and loving to help create or maintain a love of reading. Appy Hour is a way to share the best in technology applications (apps/websites/programs, etc) that are being used in your lessons and teaching.

• Wattpad - user created stories and fan fic

• Epic! Read Amazing Free eBooks

• Litsy - Social Media for Books (Instagram + Twitter) - LibGuide from @DrydenLibrarian

• Goodreads App - Social Media for Books (Think Amazon but just reviews)

• Epic! - Free eBooks for Educators

• ComicFlow - Read Comics on your device

• 17 Ways to Make Reading Engaging With GAFE

• Booktrailers from Publishers

• RazKids (Not Free)

• MyOn (Not Free)

• https://www.biblionasium.com - keeps track of pages read, monitor reading

• Free Books (23K free eBooks) - Classics (iOS)

• Elementary - Top 15 Apps

• 10 Popular Elementary Apps that Promote Reading

• https://www.teachingbooks.net/ - Includes author and illustrator interviews, name pronunciations, lesson plans, links to free supplemental materials and a strong title discovery tool (Not free)

• https://s2.netgalley.com/ - Teachers and librarians can sign up to receive free digital Advance Readers Copies of upcoming releases

• https://archive.org/ - The Internet Archive; attempts to create a digital trail of the websites and communications that would otherwise disappear. The Wayback Machine allows you to view websites as they looked on given dates in the past - can be a way to access documents that have been taken down from the web or to peer back through history!

• https://librivox.org/ - A collaboration between Project Gutenberg and archive.org - free public domain audiobooks

• https://openlibrary.org/ - Like Wikipedia for books, also includes a free lending library of 350,000 books

• https://dp.la/ - Digital Public Library of America

• NYPL SimplyE - The New York Public Library's brand new ebook portal, which makes ebook lending easier and more seamless than ever!

• www.naturebooklist.com - Pairs nature-based fiction and nonfiction titles and provides activity ideas

• Instapaper/Pocket/Flipboard

• Syllable - speedreading app

• Audible - The classic audiobook store. Requires a paid subscription, but if you are an audiobook addict the wide selection and great app are worth it

• www.fantasticfiction.co.uk - Excellent resource for readers advisory, a very easy way to make sense of the titles in a series

• http://www.kidsreads.com/ - reviews by students for students

• https://nearpod.com/ - Nearpod is interactive powerpoints, free things to download, you can bring all presentations to the students on their device, curriculum related freemium, digital citizenship

• http://www.audiobooksync.com/ - free audiobooks during the summer

• www.literature-map.com - Simple tool, enter the name of an author and see a map of other authors you may enjoy!

• www.yournextread.com/us - Enter a book that you loved and instantly get recommendations along with reviews!

• www.openingthebook.com/whichbook - allows you to select appeal terms and come away with a whole booklist

• http://www.themillions.com/ - Literary essays, reviews and analysis with a modern twist

• http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner - Literary blog by the New Yorker, collects their articles that relate in some way to literature and writers - a fascinating mix of long reads and reviews

• http://bookriot.com/ - If the New Yorker is a bit too academic for your taste, Book Riot offers up everything from podcasts, videos, book clubs, reviews and pop culture connections. (Check out their Beliefs statement!)

• http://slaughterhouse90210.tumblr.com/ - A fun little mashup of literary quotes with pop culture images

• One Star Book Review - Exactly what it sounds like - the comments of people who left one star reviews on classic literature

• https://catapult.co/ - A magazine/community/workshop/publisher for high caliber literature

• https://www.libib.com/ - A cloud based cataloging platform for personal or small organizational libraries, equipped to manage books, media and video games. A pro version is available but the free version is powerful.

• https://www.comixology.com/ - A platform for browsing, purchasing and reading manga and graphic novels (Not free)

• We Read Too - An app geared toward connecting children with books written by and featuring diverse people

• http://www.shelfie.com/ - Allows you to download ebook versions of print books that you own, discounted or free - digitize your home bookshelf!

• http://www.bookbub.com - daily emails of ebooks you might like to read (low cost and free ebooks)

• Weberbooks.com - daily emails (kindle buffet) with many free kindle downloads as well as inexpensive offerings and new release reviews.

• http://yalit.com - YA Lit has upcoming young adult titles listed by release date

• http://www.librarything.com a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata