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INTERESTING background.

"Extreme Speed Booking" The idea behind the site is to introduce students to a variety of books and form classroom book groups. How does Extreme Speed Booking work? A whole lot like speed dating. :) Students spend a little time with each book and then rate them accordingly with "I want to read more", "Interesting", "Not for me", or "I've already read". Students can also make a note of how interested they are in reading the book (maybe a 1-10 scale)? This process introduces students to a variety of books, genres and authors. Students may come across titles and authors they wouldn't otherwise find. It also helps teachers form classroom book groups that are of high-interest and investment to students because they had input.

The Battle Commander and the Commentator read furiously throughout 2011, reread, looked at what others were admiring, read more, argued, reread, agreed, disagreed, read some more, and by early December (in order to give time for our SLJ man-behind-the-curtain to begin recruiting judges) came up with our contenders. Then we had to keep it a secret from all of you for weeks and weeks!  So here we are mighty chuffed (using last year's winner's lovely term) at last to be announcing this year's list. (The brackets can be viewed here with a downloadable version available here.)

"Librarians, teachers and parents have told us how hard it is for students to understand web searching. Boolify allows students to visualize and interact with the abstract concept behind the search process--it is intuitive and easy to use with your class or in your library. Search results are presented through Google's "SafeSearch STRICT" technology to prevent objectionable content from appearing in their search results. There are two important caveats: a) no filtering technology is 100% secure, as this blog posting astutely points out and 2) we are unable to control or modify the results that we provide, beyond the filtering settings available through Google."