We arrived at the building and were taken upstairs to have breakfast and meet with another Carol; this Carol is the VP of the eCommerce department. She and her assistant Sean walked us through the new website design and further picked our brains for improvements to the book club ordering sites for teachers and parents.
Some of the new changes coming this fall are: a searchable index of all book being offered by the Scholastic clubs, in Club Shop, or teacher materials. (This is one of my favorite new features!) You will now be able to search for titles by author, subject, grade level, genre, skill set, or title. I believe they will be adding a feature that will allow teachers and parents to keep a snapshot of students that will allow recommendations to be made based on the child's grade level, age, and/or reading level. (They were still working on the details for that one.)
Another feature coming this fall (and is already in place in some areas of the country through test markets) is the e-reader feature. Scholastic will be offering e-books for sale through the website to be downloaded to the Scholastic e-reader software, which is free. The software can be downloaded onto a computer, tablet, or smartphone; I think you can download up to five per household. Anyhow, once books are purchased, they go to the device of your choice. Each child has his or her own "bookshelf" where they can store their digital books. The program itself reminds me of a LeapPad combined with an e-book. The students have the ability to look up words, take notes, highlight, play games, and do comprehension activities throughout the books. (This was the one I tested out this past spring; I couldn't tell you the details until it went live.) I can't wait to start adding books for my kiddos.
After the discussions about the above, we stopped for lunch around 12:30. We went to Miro Cafe for lunch and had a few minutes to walk around before we went back. The afternoon was filled with the actual preview of the websites. My take: much easier navigation, especially if you have coupons to enter with your order. The whole ordering process has been streamlined for ease. There will also be a change to the form letter available on the site for parent online ordering.
We also talked about how to get parents interested in book clubs and online ordering. Some of the things the other teachers use are: a Smartboard presentation showing parents how to get on the site during parent nights (if you have a Smartboard. I don't.), an "All About Me" letter indicating student reading preferences, adding a link to your class web page, and providing the "How Book Clubs Work" link to parents.
At 5:30 we ended the day with a little shopping at the Scholastic store. I bought my kiddos some new books: Fairest for my oldest and a Ricky Ricotta book and activity book for my youngest. Here are some new pictures from this trip:
 |
| The entrance to the lobby. |
 |
| With the last installment of the movie series coming out, I thought it only fitting to take this. |
 |
| Just thought this was really cute. |
 |
| This is my pic from inside the stall. I am standing in the corner. |
 |
| Totally fogged. I can see out, but no one can see in! |
When you go into the stall, the door is all glass. Once you shut the door, the stall glass fogs up so no one can see you and a lighted "Occupied" sign appears on the door. When you are finished, you open the door and the fog clears. A shock at first. Once dinner was over, we went back to the hotel to prepare for Day 2.
Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment