Summer Reading Beanstack Tips from a Cautiously Optimistic Librarian

Summer Reading Beanstack Tips from a Cautiously Optimistic Librarian

By Natalie Lane (Kent Count Library, Children's Librarian)

Beanstack has come to the Eastern Shore and promises to add a new online component to summer reading.  Libraries will be able to provide greater access and possibly reach people who would rather do their summer reading from home in a digital environment.  But how exactly do we make that happen without creating a mountain of extra work for ourselves?

This is the first year we will be incorporating Beanstack into the summer program in Kent County and while we are hopeful for its success, we are also worried at what kinds of hurdles this new service might bring our way.

I’ll mention that our program structure is pretty loose and what we have set up may not work for every system.  In essence our program works a lot like an arcade.  Kids play the summer reading game and earn points based on the activities they complete (we provide about 60 different activities).  They cannot repeat an activity and they are free to claim their points for prizes out of our library store whenever they want to.

For any librarian considering setting up their summer program in Beanstack, here’s a few tips from what we’ve learned so far:

11)     Create your summer program or game in Beanstack before you create your print version. 

I can’t stress this enough.  Trying to make something you already have fit into Beanstack will take much more time than creating a workable model in Beanstack and then putting it on paper.

22)     Switch between your admin and patron view often.

Take a look at what your program looks like from the user end.  Does it make sense?  Is it clear and easy to follow?  If you have staff members that can be guinea pigs for you, have them create accounts and preview the program.  See what their experience is like when they use it.

33)     If you’re going to use codes to claim an activity, use the same one all the time.

I know it sounds like that means kids might cheat the system, but why make it harder on your staff than it has to be?

44)     Create your prize list first.

If you know you’re using prizes for completion of learning tracks, logging of books/pages/minutes, or for earning badges then set up the list of prizes first.  You will be asked every time you create a badge, learning track, or logging milestone if there is a prize attached to it. 

55)     Create your badges second.

Once you’ve created your prize list, determine what you want kids to receive badges for.  Reading a certain amount? Are you tracking reading with pages, minutes, books? Do they get something after a certain number of pages, minutes, books? If you’re using points, do you want badges for obtaining certain levels of points?  Are you awarding badges for writing book reviews? Set up what the milestones are going to be ahead of time.   

66)     Create your learning tracks next.

If your program is going to use learning tracks to house activities for your summer reading program, then set these up before creating the program.  Learning tracks are where you can house activities of any kind.  Questions, activities involving websites, reading a specific type of book, or other prompts.  Be creative! When you create a new program you will be asked if you want to include any of the learning tracks that have been created.  If you have points turned on, you will also be able to assign point values to each activity.  Note:  Learning tracks can also have a badge assigned for completion.  You can select from any of the badges that already exist (there are a lot!).  However, if you have something special in mind, you will need to create that first.

77)     Create the program last.

Set up the program with the dates it will run, the badges you want to include, and the learning tracks that will be used.  At this point it’s just plugging in everything you have already created.

88)     Points.

This is a new feature for Beanstack and I can’t tell you how relieved I was when it was added because it made everything very straight forward.  Points can be awarded for logging of books, writing reviews, or for activities in learning tracks. We don’t make logging of books, minutes, pages or reviews part of our summer program.  Everything we want kids to be able to do is listed in the learning tracks.  We did this because we wanted kids to have flexibility in the kinds of activities they participated in.  For example, this summer our program consists of 4 learning tracks.  Each track has 15 activities.  Each activity is worth a different number of points, depending on its level of difficulty.  (We did keep activities within the same track worth the same number of points for the sake of simplicity).  Activities include art, reading, science, and program attendance.  Kids are free to choose as many activities out of any track that they want.  While there is an option to mark a track ‘complete’ after a certain number of activities are done, we did not use this option because we want kids to continue as long as they want.   As they check off activities, they accumulate points and these points get cashed in for prizes at the library.

Be mindful of what you have points turned on and off for.  Check the user side repeatedly to ensure clarity of where the points are actually being earned.  Note:  There is currently an issue where if you have a logging feature turned on (books, reviews, pages, etc) but set to 0 points, they are still listed as options for earning points even though they are set to 0.  I’ve let Beanstack know about this because it makes it unclear for the user.

99)     Figuring out who has gotten what.  Points.

(If you’re not using points, you can skip to the next section.)

This is the part where Beanstack has room to grow. While it keeps track of a total tally of who has earned what in terms of points, it does not track when they earned them or if they have been redeemed.  Our program doesn’t have a specific time or milestone when kids can claim their points.  It is ongoing throughout the summer as they accumulate points.  Some summer programs provide a prize once a track is completed in its entirety or once a specific badge/point milestone is earned, but our program is entirely left up to the kids to decide when they are ready to cash in.  Whether they have 10 points or 200, it is their choice to wait and save their points for something bigger or to spend them right away.  Last year, prior to Beanstack, we just kept a spreadsheet with everyone’s points on it and what they had spent, earned, and purchased in our summer reading store.  This year, we plan to do the same because there’s no way to separate out in Beanstack what points have already been redeemed or spent.

110)  Figuring out who has gotten what. Prizes.

If you want it to be really simple, just tie your prizes to the completion of an entire track or most of a track (you can select this option when you create a learning track), or for logging milestones (the books, pages, minutes they read).  Beanstack does allow you to create a report of prizes, so if you’re not sure if someone has already claimed a prize for a particular track, you can always run the report or check their account.  You must mark a prize as redeemed in their account once you award it.

111)  Events

Unless you have someone that can spend the time doing data entry for events, I don’t recommend the use of this feature.  I’ve tried downloading our events into a spreadsheet and uploading them to Beanstack many times and every time I do, it is more trouble than it’s worth. Until they add a direct RSS feed feature or some other way to easily import the data, we won’t spend the staff time on this feature.

112)  Book Lists

You can create book lists of all your summer reading books and they will automatically check your catalog for them.  This is a pretty neat feature and worth investing the time to create the lists if your county uses specific reading lists for summertime.