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Amazon in the classroom?

Amazon.com has some really great resources, and I have been tossing around the use of some of them in a classroom environment lately. I’ll just outline some thoughts - nothing polished (is anything anymore?).

  • Wishlist :: I LOVE the wishlist feature on Amazon’s site. I keep a list of books I want to read and add to it all the time. Often times, I’ll be driving down the road (probably listing to some show on KERA or one of NPR’s broadcasts) and I’ll grab my phone to record a book title that I want to dump into my wishlist. The best part of this feature on Amazon, in my opinion, is that it uses the evolving principles of social connections to recommend other book titles based on what you read. This is simply one more way for me to develop connections that I never would have known about before. So, what if a teacher had his/her kids do this and select a book title based on their topic of interest?
  • Book Reviews :: The book reviews are great on Amazon, and this seems to be a pretty easy integration. Why not have students start by reading reviews and tying that into a classroom lesson, and then posting/adding to the reviews that are currently online?

I’ll start there and leave it at that. …just some rough thoughts that need polishing and addition of thoughts. But I figured I better get them down before I run off the road.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 21st, 2006 at 4:01 pm and is filed under digital fluency, edtech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Amazon in the classroom?”

  1. Vicki Davis Says:
    March 21st, 2006 at 11:37 pm

    I have students read a motivational book each year and work jointly with the English department. They create a PowerPoint and present the book to their classmates. Their final portion of the project this year is going to be to log on and create a book review of their book on Amazon. I’m so very excited. I think this is a built in tool for students around the world to contribute to reviews of books. It can give them a voice too! They are excited but nervous.

    It also sends us into discussions of the important of accuracy posted in public places and we will talk about some recent happenings at Wikipedia. When we post them to Amazon I’m going to post it on my blog.

    You and I are a like mind on this one!

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