Reading 2.0: Where is the Love?

My cousin Laura Nadler Scott just published her first book, Where is the Love?

As described by award-winning journalist and writer Mikey Rox, the "story of little Leni Lovebird reminds us that it's all too easy to take what we have for granted and that often it's what's in front of our eyes that we fail to see. In the end though, we always end up back where we belong: Home. Fitting, too: that is where the heart is, after all."

As I went to the publisher site to check out the book preview, what struck me was that the entire book is available in a beautiful digital format using ISSUU. Which you can view here.



I continued through the publisher site and saw that there were several other books available like this one:



Then I went to the ISSUU site and there are so many free digital publications available there that will become a powerful resource for any innovative educator and their students. What is even most powerful is that with a site like this every student and teacher has the ability to become a published author for free by publishing works such as this one from nine-year-old Dylan Matthew Winger a student who has moved from 20th century "Hand-it-in Writing" to 21st century "Publish-it Writing."



However, just like with Tweeting, perhaps the most powerful transformation in 21st century reading, writing, and publishing is the power of the conversation which is not possible with paper books and rarely occurs with hand-it-in writing. You see books published on ISSUU provide book and magazine authors and their readers the unique ability to have a conversation by providing commenting and rating functionality.

Additionally, the site also provides analytics which give writers insight into their popularity by number of views and also indicates any sites that link to them. This is truly authentic publication that connects students to their audience in a real way. You can see what this looks like in this publication of The Paw Print, a student newspaper from Lonoke, Arkansas.


Here are the comments and analytics showing number of views and who links to the newspaper.


















What a terrific way for innovative educators to provide their students with authentic opportunities to engage with a book author and other readers around the world. You can try it yourself by visiting this book on the ISSUU site at this link. After logging on to ISSUU you will be able to rate and comment on any book.

Innovative educators can easily reach out to their personal learning network and find other teachers who might want to share the book with their students. Classes reading the book can contribute to the rating of the book and they can comment and converse with each other, and ideally with the author as well! Innovative educators interested in conversing with this author can friend Laura Nadler Scott on Facebook with a "personal message" indicating that your class is reading the book, will be commenting, and that you'd love for her to respond to some of their questions and comments. I'm sure she'll be happy to do so.

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