Victorian Premiers' Reading Challenge
We believe that it should be fun to explore books and discover new ones!
So we designed the BookExploramatic to help make this a fun and fruitful process. It works by matching your personal preferences to what the authors say about their own books. You can use this several ways:
The "Popularity slider" is a special one that uses information from people clicking "I like this book". It is updated daily.
This software is the result of research by Jon Pearce, Shanton Chang and others at The University of Melbourne. We are investigating ways of supporting online *exploration* as opposed to *search*. The technology behind the software is called iFISH and is being used in several other projects (have a look at the iFISH project page).
The BookExploramatic is just one example of iFISH in use. It has been developed with the support of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and the School Library Association of Victoria.
For more information you can visit the iFISH project page or email Jon Pearce.
October, 2012.
The sliders let you express your desires or preferences about books that you want to find. Here is what they mean:
These sliders refer to the actual story.
Magic, unreal and extraordinary things vs more everyday, realistic stories.
Giggle, giggle. You get the meaning of this. Seriously!
You understand this one too!
This refers to the story itself. Does it have a straightforward plot? Or lots of twists and turns and complexities?
These sliders describe the physical book and how it is written.
From lots of pictures, to just pure words.
You get this idea!
This refers to the use of language and difficulty of words - effectively, the reading level.
The popularity is worked out by how many people click on the "I like this book" button ( or the thumbs up icon when you roll over the front cover).
The grade levels are suggested by the book authors. Many books are recommended across several levels.