Welcome back to the Product Spotlight series in the Beanstack Blog! Here, you’ll find news about our latest features and insights into how Beanstack’s tools can help you achieve your reading goals. Whether you’re already using Beanstack, or you’re looking to build a culture of reading in your community—this series is for you.
What’s New?
Friends and Leaderboards for Schools
We know that social connections—and a little healthy competition—can be huge motivators for students. Friends and Leaderboards, Beanstack’s newest feature for schools, harnesses the power of your school’s social networks to grow students’ reading habits and help them discover books they love.
To activate Friends and Leaderboards for your school’s Beanstack site, just reach out to your Client Success Manager, and they’ll have you up and running in no time. As soon as you activate the feature, your students can swap friend invitations with their fellow students, see what their friends are reading, and compete and celebrate their reading progress in Leaderboards.
Sending and accepting friend invitations is easy. Students can search for friends by name and send invitations with just a few clicks. Accepting friend invitations is just as straightforward: students can see and accept invitations on both their challenge and friend pages.
On their friends page, students see a card for each friend they’ve connected with and sent invitations to. Students can click on friend cards to see details about their friends’ reading including recently earned badges, challenges they’re enrolled in, and the latest books in their reading log.
Cancelling or declining a friend invitation or removing a friend is straightforward and discreet. Doing so simply removes a friend connection or invitation, and does not send any notifications to students. Students can only see details about friends who have confirmed their invitations.
Students can head to the leaderboards to see who among their friends has read the most during the past week or month. Leaderboards display the top 25 readers by minutes, books, or both, depending on how your school’s Beanstack site tracks reading. The top three readers will see gold, silver, and bronze medals next to their names!
We can’t wait to see how Friends and Leaderboards helps students grow their reading habits. The third-grader who struggles to pick up a book might be inspired to match her friends’ reading stats. And the middle school student who loathes assigned reading might find their newest favorite book series through a friend.
Connect with Us
To turn on Friends and Leaderboards for your school’s Beanstack site, just reach out to your Client Success Manager, and they’ll get you started.
If you’re planning to put Friends and Leaderboards to use for your students—or you’re a librarian who has ideas about using this feature for your library community—we’d be grateful to get your thoughts via this quick survey.
As always, if you’re an educator, librarian, or parent who wants to learn more about how Beanstack can help your school, community, or family achieve its literacy goals, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a note at beanstack.com/contact.