Beanstack? What's that? Let's dive into Beanstack & take a virtual field trip on the Beanstack bus!
For a deep dive into Beanstack, you can embark on a virtual field trip with the video above. In this video, I'll show you the ropes of Beanstack's features, affordances, and constraints. Even better, we'll enroll my snake GG in a library Beanstack program (for demonstration purposes, of course. He is a snake, and therefore, he will not read 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten.)
For a cliff notes version, Beanstack is a web-based tech tool that gamifies and incentivizes reading and learning. Although it's widely used for summer reading programs, libraries and schools can use Beanstack in many creative ways. Creativity and Innovative Learning doesn't just apply to how kids use Beanstack, but also to how educators can shape Beanstack into unique learning modules that feel more like play than work.
From my experience as a Library Associate in a public library's youth department, Beanstack has been a goldmine for trying out unique reading and learning challenges. In addition to summer reading, Beanstack proved to be a fun way to keep kids reading over the colder months with a Winter Reading Challenge. I've used Beanstack for piloting writing challenges for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and Poetry Month. Thanks to Beanstack, the students in my Writing Club library program honed their creativity outside of the library, earning badges and prizes along the way. For NaNoWriMo, everyone who completed the Beanstack Book Bootcamp program won a prize pack. This prize pack included a completion certificate, colorable bookmark, notebook, pin, NaNoWriMo sticker set, 3-D printed bookmark, and a Writing Club Journal. The journal was made by the students who participated in the Beanstack program. In this program, one of the optional activities was submitting writing and art to the journal.
Image Source: Personal Photo
As a classic neurodivergent person who loves dinosaurs, I was also privileged to assist in our library's Dinovember challenge. Kids completed dinosaur themed activities in celebration of Dinovember in November. For the kids joining these challenges, it's not just the variety of challenges that transform learning, but also the variety of activities offered in each challenge. For example, the Dinovember participants could choose one activity from a list - stomp like a dinosaur, walk like a dinosaur, or roar like a dinosaur. By completing this activity, kids earned a badge - a colorful dinosaur on their Beanstack account. Every new dinosaur badge brought students closer to program completion, similarly to completing quests in a video game.
This gamelike structure embodies the spirit of the ISTE trend Games for Learning. Although Beanstack isn't a game, per se, the platform does gamify reading and learning with points, badges, reading streaks, and prizes. Kids can also earn tickets for prize baskets, giving students a shot at earning a bonus prize. At my library, summer reading Beanstack participants put their tickets toward prize baskets such as Lego Sets, American Girl Dolls, and more.
In addition to making learning fun, Beanstack can make DEI initiatives creative and innovative. Beanstack promotes custom reading challenges like Pride 365 and Black History Month, bringing diversity, equity, and inclusion to the heart of a program. These programs tie into the ISTE trend of Equity and Inclusion, celebrating diverse communities with a tech tool that encourages community-wide participation.
In order to better engage diverse communities, I do wish Beanstack was more accessible to speakers of diverse languages. Although any language(s) can be used for creating challenges, the website and the app default to English (as far as I can tell). I'd love to discover more tech tools that are designed for dual language classrooms. For example, the tech tool PebbleGo includes all five of their learning modules in English and Spanish (provided that educators budget for both modules). If Beanstack were designed with multilingual features, it would best support multilingual students.
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
Beanstack Blog
*relates to ISTE trends: Games for Learning; Creativity and Innovative Learning
Beanstack Blog
*relates to ISTE trend Equity & Inclusion
School Library Journal
American Libraries Magazine
Beanstack has a podcast called The Reading Culture. Per the Beanstack website, here's the gist: "Beanstack co-founder Jordan Lloyd Bookey hosts conversations that dive into authors and reading enthusiasts' personal journeys and insights into motivating young people to read."
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