Books Collection
Designed for primary age students P1 – P6, this package includes 100 books from our free collection and 200 premium titles across seven categories:
- Storybooks
- Nature & Science
- Social studies (includes history, geography, citizenship)
- Fun Learning Concepts (shapes, numbers, colours)
- Health & Wellbeing (including socio-emotional learning)
- Language Arts (books that reinforce language, grammar, rhyming, poetry)
- Other Fiction & Non Fiction
Reviewed by a Kenyan education expert, the books are organized by age groups (3 – 5, 6 – 8, and 9 – 12 years of age) and designed to be used by both children and teachers. Publishers include seven from East Africa, three from South Africa, 12 from West Africa and two from India. Explore the East Africa and West Africa collections.
Co-Branding
As part of our partner-first approach, Worldreader offers co-branding of the BookSmart app. Your logo will appear on the BookSmart Android home screen. This customization is also available for the partner-specific BookSmart distribution link.
Technology
BookSmart was developed according to human-centered design principles, including extensive in-country user testing. BookSmart is easy to use for literate and semi-literate mobile users. Available on two platforms, books can be downloaded and read off-line to save on data.
- BookSmart for Android is available on the Google Play Store and meets the needs of the growing smartphone market in the Global South. Worldreader is not currently available on iOS but is available on iPhones via web browser.
- BookSmart for the Web is available for readers who still use data-enabled feature phones. Readers access books by typing booksmart.world/free in the phone’s web browser or on the Opera Mini browser speed dial.
Worldreader offers custom links for partners: https://booksmart.world/partnername. The unique link is accessible on all operating systems (Android, Opera Mini, iOS). The link will redirect the reader to the most suitable platform (Android or Web) by recognising the operating system on the reader’s phone.
Training & Support
Worldreader supports partners with orientation and training materials to integrate digital reading into education programs or community-support efforts.
Digital Reading Kit
- A slide deck of important facts around the educational and emotional benefits of regular reading to children. The slide deck is available in English, Spanish, and Arabic. It’s editable for easy rebranding or modification.
- Best practices for program managers, teachers, and parents on the benefits of digital reading.
- A sample reading calendar with book recommendations and tips for how to structure the first 60 days of a reading program. The calendar includes recommended books by age group and a list of activities for parents to use with their children.
Orientation & Technical Support
- An overview of the full collection, its categories, publishers, and alignment to learning outcomes or curriculum.
- Guided introduction of your data dashboard and the data insights you will receive.
- Troubleshooting and answers to your specific questions.
Worldreader recognizes appropriate app use is critical for successful reading. You will also receive an online guide in English, Spanish or Arabic on how to use the mobile application. These support services are available within the first month of signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU).
Data Insights
Worldreader’s data practices and applications are General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant. While the benefits of reading are well known, Worldreader believes that data is critical to driving impact. Therefore, Worldreader provides insights into time spent reading and most commonly read books, according to reading level, gender and age. These insights provide organizations and schools guiding information on reading behaviors. A self-service dashboard provides data insights a monthly basis, available after the launch of the reading program.
This dashboard contains reading behaviour data only from the children whose parents and caregivers have chosen to register an account. Once schools reopen and a classroom school intervention is implemented, the project data set, with anonymised individual reading data, can be linked to offline reading data collected at the school level.
Worldreader is currently developing a mechanism to collect classroom and student-level data when using school-based offline solutions. This option will be available in early January 2021.
Digital Behavior Change Resources
Changing reading behavior requires motivation and encouragement. Worldreader’s digital behavior change resources draw from nearly five years of experience in low-resource and vulnerable communities in South Asia and the Middle East. With frequent and targeted messaging, parents/caregivers can increase the time they spend reading to children or time their children spend reading. The behavior change resources are available for the Android app, as the Web-based app does not support push notifications.
You will receive the text for WhatsApp messages and Facebook posts, posters, and flyers to support your communication with teachers and parents.
Fee
The first three-months of the digital reading service are free. After this free-trial period, organizations/schools can sign a one-year annual subscription. The digital reading package is priced at $0.50 per subscription (each registered account) per month. Volume discounts are available. Subscriptions activate once parents register in the BookSmart app, with a unique account link. Note that on average, approximately 20% of families offered the app will actually register. Worldreader only charges for activated licenses.
Encourage parents and caregivers to register their accounts for a more personalised experience and access to the premium collection of books. For registered students, Wolrdreader can link data from home to data collected at school to provide a fuller picture of reading behavior. (See Data Insights Section above.)
If you do not want to maintain the premium digital reading package after the free three-month trial period, readers will still have access to the free collection of books. However, the premium collection of books, co-branding, data insights, and digital behavior change resources will no longer be available.
