Cover to Cover: HackDTech Education-Track Project

Inspiration

During the summer, many students do not have direct access to books like they do during the school year. This prevents students from continuing to improve as readers, and also has the potential to set them behind their expected reading levels. Many online services that provide a platform for students to continue reading outside of school require paid accounts, but we believe that literacy isn't a paid privilege and that everyone should have the chance to fall in love with books.

What it does

We wanted to provide a free service that will encourage students to continue reading during the summer. Cover-to-Cover is a personalized reading journal for K-8 readers. We think Cover-to-Cover is especially useful now, as with the COVID-19 pandemic, many students are not able to visit their local libraries, which often host Summer Reading Log challenges. With a free account, children and young-adults can track their progress, earn motivating achievements, and get personalized book recommendations to keep the pages turning.

How we built it

We used HTML, CSS, and Javascript to build each page of our website.

Challenges we ran into

With this project, our biggest challenge was time. We were not able to implement a backend or database for storing information for Cover to Cover yet, but that is something we hope to do in the near future. We also were not able to implement total functionality of every feature that is present on our site just yet due to the time constraint. However, we do have plans to implement additional functionality, which we’ll discuss next.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're very proud of our embedded quiz feature which not only provides very personalized recommendations out of a pool of dozens of books, but also encourages readers to purchase from Black and Queer-owned independent bookstores. We're also really happy with the organization of our site and our kid-friendly UI. We placed a lot of focus on the ideation and design of this project, so we're glad it turned out beautifully.

What we learned

We learned to use Figma to quickly prototype and share design ideas. We also had a lot of practice problem solving and correcting the issues that occur when translating a flat design into a functional site.

What's next for Cover to Cover: HackDTech Education-Track Project

This project is one that we hope to continue working on in the future. We have a number of ideas already as to ways in which we can develop Cover to Cover. First, we hope to implement the idea of providing a reader with book recommendations based on the level of books they have been reading as well as the subject matter of those books. Readers will be able to rate a book after finishing to dictate how much they liked the book. If they did not enjoy reading the book, the website will not generate a recommendation based off of that book, but if the student loved the book, then the website can suggest books similar to that specific title. We also hope to implement a social component to Cover to Cover in the future, particularly for our older readers. Our idea is that readers will have the ability to add friends by username, and then compete with their friends on the basis of most pages or time read.These competitions will encourage readers to log their pages so that they can beat their friends as well as see what books their friends are reading. If Cover to Cover were to receive sponsorships, we would like to provide physical incentives for readers to continue leveling up and earning achievements. Some ideas we have are sending readers a physical copy of one of their top recommended books on behalf of Cover to Cover once they reach a certain level, or partnering with restaurants and businesses to provide readers coupons to receive discounts on food, toys, clothes, and of course, books as they unlock achievements on Cover to Cover.