Overview

The Great Reading Adventure is a robust, open source software designed to manage library reading programs. The GRA is free to use, modify, and share. We hope you like it and will consider becoming a part of the community.

Digital badges

“Digital Badges are an assessment and credentialing mechanism that is housed and managed online. Badges are designed to make visible and validate learning in both formal and informal settings and hold the potential to help transform where and how learning is valued.” -- MacArthur Foundation

Digital badges are a great way to enhance your reading program. They can be used in addition to (or as a replacement for) physical incentive prizes. Digital badges go far beyond the momentary happiness that a toy incentive provides, as they carry with them recognition of achievement, engagement, and personal identity. The Great Reading Adventure makes it easy to create badges for those who participate in library and other community activities.

Here’s how it works:

  • A participant attends a program at your library.
  • At the end of the program, you give the participant a secret code for attending.
  • The participant enters the secret code into his/her online reading log.
  • The participant automatically receives the badge. Our badge wizard makes the process super simple: you just create an event, upload a badge, and assign a secret code. It’s a great new way to tie the online summer reading program to the events in your bricks-and-mortar locations.

Literacy activities

A good online summer reading program ought to deliver quality content to participants. The Great Reading Adventure features seven unique content templates. Each game can be configured for sound and three different difficulty levels. Templates include: e-books, Code Breaker, Memory, Matching, Word Matching, Hidden Picture, and Choose Your Own Adventure style games.

Unparalleled reporting

With The Great Reading Adventure, immediate access to your program’s vital statistics is just a click away! Our stats dashboard gives you a visual breakdown of your registrations and completions (further broken out by gender and age).

Using our super-versatile ad-hoc reporting, you can compare participation data with any combination of registration fields you would like. Interested in knowing how many six-year-old Jefferson Elementary students completed the “Dinosaurs” reading list? You can find out. Want to see an aggregation of all the test scores for your smallest, most rural location? You can see it. The possibilities are endless.

All reports are exportable to HTML and Excel, putting all the summer reading data you need right at your fingertips.

Customizable everything

Is your library a member of the CSLP? Or iREAD? The GRA is ready for you to drop your theme artwork in and create a program that’s all your own. Our home pages are designed with simple “what you see is what you get” editors, so, if you’re comfortable using word processing software, you’ll be right at home in the GRA. If you’re a little more tech-savvy, you can delve into the CSS.

In addition to the home screen, you can customize:

  • Program parameters
  • Registration fields
  • Tests and surveys
  • Avatars
  • Badges
  • Games
  • E-books
  • Messages
  • Text
  • Prizes
  • And more!

Built-in evaluation

You put a lot of time and effort into your summer reading program- it’s important to know that what you’re doing has an impact. The GRA’s comprehensive evaluation tools will help you do just that.

With our pre- and post-testing modules, you can deliver an assessment to participants and compare their scores to their activity during the program. The system auto-scores the multiple choice assessments, which gives you all the data with none of the hassles.

The assessment module doubles as a survey tool, so you can simultaneously gather qualitative and quantitative data to tell a more impactful summer reading story.

Additional features

  • Family accounts
  • System-wide program administration
  • Curated reading lists
  • Book reviews
  • Point leaderboard
  • Events
  • Online coupon administration
  • Prize tracking
  • Random prize drawings
  • Coupon code generation
  • Notifications
  • Game map
  • Unlockable content
  • Badge gallery