Cultivating Love For Reading With The School Social: Transforming Readers To Leaders With A Digitally Smart Approach

With a digitally smart approach and research-backed methods, The School Social aids parents and educators in fostering early reading habits in children. As a digital beacon, it serves the need of the hour by using smart technology to make the web a better place for young audiences, giving them a safe space to wander with their curiosity and nurture their world of imagination. The aim is to make screen-time meaningful, impart knowledge while having fun and making smart-lifestyle a priority early in the growing up years.

Making reading a choice, no more a forced exercise

Imagine an eight-year-old walking to you and asking for a little screen time, not to watch a YouTube video, nor play their favourite video game, but to read. Yes, to Read. In an era dominated by screens and social media, instilling a love for reading in young ones has become increasingly challenging for parents and educators alike. Recognising this need, The School Social - An E-magazine for Kids emerges as a beacon of hope, offering a captivating digital platform dedicated to fostering a daily reading habit among children and adolescents.

Looks cool and works smart

The platform has a UI (User Interface) that looks super cool and captivates the attention of young 7-14 year olds. The design of the reading dashboard is based on children’s digital behavioural patterns, which has been further reviewed and revised by Dan Revitte, Director, Product Designer, CNN Digital. To design with the intention to hold the readers from being distracted, two of Nielsen Norman Group researches have been followed closely, these are:

1. Designing for Kids: Cognitive Considerations By Feifei Liu

2. Teenager’s UX: Designing for Teens By Alita Joyce and Jakob Nielsen

At the heart of The School Social lies its personalised reading dashboard, which provides a scrollable content feed with six primary categories: News, Get Smarter - Articles, Trending Music, Geekdome, Writer’s Social and Sports.

Individual students have their own profile where they can choose their interests and submit entries for publishing. An interactive quiz game makes them earn credit points, which can later be used for rewards. A parent’s dashboard is included to see the child’s reading progress and access parenting resources.
 
A glimpse into the platform's effectiveness can be seen through its sample, available at: https://theschoolsocial.in/sample-paper.

Transforming readers into leaders

Barack Obama, himself an avid reader as a kid, talks about how reading always gave him a perspective to understand people’s lives better and hence helped him become an empathetic leader. His parenting routines have always involved book recommendations for his daughters based on their reading interests. He once said in an interview with The New York Times, "And that’s why seeing my daughters now picking up books that I read is gratifying, because I want them to have perspective — not for purposes of complacency, but rather to give them confidence that people with a sense of determination and courage and pluck can reshape things. It is empowering for them.”

Safe and regulated content

With the changing digital landscape and growing noise of targeted ads, tracking cookies and unreliable social media content and the young ones being glued to the screens, how do we ensure that they are safe online?

The School Social, as the name suggests, also provides the school community, a safe social space to not only read and get smarter, but also a place to share their creativity with the world. The platform is highly secure, restricting any kind of ads or tracking cookies and allows only subscribed users, that have verified profiles, to access the social platform. All the submissions for blogs and even comments are first reviewed and approved by the editorial teams and then published online. Online safety for kids is imperative and The School Social maintains highly-regulated content.

Your partner in making everyday interesting

Children are naturally curious and innocent, the only task of educators or parents is to serve them with the right resources. The School Social brings a resourceful repository of high-interest articles and content that grabs children’s attention quickly and holds them to read for long. From Science and Technology, to Sports, Food, Fashion, DIY Crafts, Travel and Books, they get their personalised interest-based daily e-magazine, which not only answers their out-of-the-box questions, but also makes them more curious.

Reading is much more than just a literacy practice. But what can parents and teachers do when they don’t know how to get their young ones to read or what to recommend?

Geekiness is cool and so is research

With a research-based approach at its core, The School Social endeavours to assist parents and teachers in nurturing the reading habit in children from an early age.

Through the following extensive global research, the platform offers valuable insights and resources to support its mission,

1. The Power Of Reading: Insights From The Research, 2004

In Stephen Krashen’s influential book, 'The Power of Reading', the acclaimed researcher emphasises the significance of creating informal environments for reading. Krashen argues that when children are free to choose their preferred reading materials in an informal environment, their reading proficiency and overall literacy skills increase.

2. Online Reading can Improve Academic Results - Research by National Literacy Trust, United Kingdom

The National Literacy Trust, United Kingdom, conducted a study to investigate the impact of ebooks and online content on reading. The study found out that exposing kids to appropriate e-books/digital content could increase the average reading levels significantly.

3. '15-Minutes of Daily Reading' Is The Differentiator Between A Successful Student And A Struggling Student In Terms Of Their Overall Academic Performance.

A research study based on PISA scores from 32 countries highlights how 15 minutes of daily reading makes a big difference in students’ academic performance, bridges achievement gaps, influences long-term outcomes and enhances vocabulary growth along with other positive effects of reading.
 
Deriving from these, The School Social provides an informal environment for students to read in a digital format, for a 15-minute engagement everyday.

Partnerships with schools

One of The School Social's recent innovations is its customised school-specific platform, which allows schools to partner with the platform to integrate it seamlessly into their educational ecosystem. By adopting The School Social as an official initiative, schools can enrich their community of students, teachers and parents with a curated selection of reading material tailored to their needs. For more information visit: https://theschoolsocial.in/The_School_Social-For_Schools.pdf.

In essence, The School Social stands as a testament to the transformative power of daily reading practice over a digital platform that helps in shaping young curious minds positively. By providing a curated and safe environment for reading, writing and publishing, the platform empowers children and adolescents to explore their interests, expand their horizons and cultivate a lifelong love for reading.

As we navigate the digital age, initiatives like The School Social serve as beacons of light, guiding the next generation towards a brighter and more literate future.

For more information and demo, one can reach out through the official channels: 

Website: https://theschoolsocial.in

Read more research: https://research.theschoolsocial.in

Instagram: @theschoolsocial

Email ID: info@theschoolsocial.in

Contact number: +91 9711804070