(Natalie) Hello, Sagehen readers,
this is Natalie Campbell
from the office of Alumni and Parent Engagement,
and I am here today
to help you navigate the Good Reads platform,
which we are currently hosting the Pomona College Book Club on.
Today I'm going to go ahead
and show you how to sign up, log in,
and use the discussion boards
as well as some key features that we have,
including notifications where you can get updated on discussions
that are happening
and current multimedia that we've posted on the website.
So I'm going to go ahead and start off.
There are two landing pages that you could potentially land on.
This first landing page is the actual Pomona College Book Club page,
which if you are going from any of the emails
that we've sent out at this point
this is the page that you'll probably land on.
You can go up here to the right side and use "Join"
if you have not created an account or "Sign In".
But for search purposes
I'll go ahead and show you the general page.
So the first time that you're going to come on here,
you're, you know, you can use your web browser
and search "Good Reads",
you'll land on this page,
and if you haven't created an account
you can use your name, your email, and a password
that you want to use here to sign up.
You also have the option of social sign on,
so if you have a Facebook page or a Twitter page,
feel free to use that to sign on.
So I already have an account created
and I'm going to go ahead and just log in.
And when we go here,
you're going to come to your general page.
On this general page
you'll be able to update your profile,
which I'll show you in just a little bit,
as well as update notifications.
But first we're going to go ahead and sign into,
or join the group.
So you're going to go here to Community and Groups,
and you'll get the search bar here,
which you just want to look up "Pomona college"
and it will populate the Pomona College Book Club.
Go ahead and click here on the book club,
and then you'll opt in to join the group.
You won't be able to actually,
you can see the discussions and all of that
but you won't be able to actually join in and create posts
until you join the group.
So you'll click "Group"
and here you'll be given a couple of options on notifications.
These can be changed later if you realize that,
you know, you want to be notified more often
or that you're getting too many emails [laughs],
so I would recommend the Digest.
The Digest is great
because it will be sent either daily or weekly
based on how often people are commenting and posting,
and that just gives you an overview.
We do know that this platform is not a platform
that you probably will be on daily,
so the digest is nice
because it just lets you know
when there is activity and you can jump in
and chirp in on what you think.
So we'll go ahead and select "Digest" and "Join Group"
and now you've joined the group.
At this point you're free to view some of the content
that we've already put up, whether it's a discussion or videos,
but I'm going to go ahead and do an overview.
There's two ways that you kind of interact with the page.
I'll do the general landing page
and then we'll go into some of the quick links
that you can use as well.
So here we have the overview of the group as well as our upcoming reads.
We will change these out every semester as well as in the summer.
And then down here you have a quick view
of what we're currently reading,
what we're going to be reading,
and then down lower you'll be able to see all of the books
that are kind of picked to date,
or have been already read.
Down a little bit further we've got this discussion board,
and the discussion board is great;
you can go back into old discussions.
We are going to keep them all open
so please, if you aren't able to read the book now
but you get into it later,
we'd love for you to still make sure that you get in there
and communicate about your thoughts
and how you felt about the books.
But, so right now we have the Citizen discussion open,
we'll soon be opening up "The Unwinding",
which is our October read,
but in here we have a welcome message from the professor.
We were very excited that she was here on campus
and we were able to get a direct welcome message for all of you,
and then some discussion posts that we've put up.
We did just notice that there was a news article
in the LA Times and the New York Times,
so we went ahead and posted those up there
and you'll see that we have this red highlight here of what's new.
Basically what that is,
is once you've read those discussion posts,
that will disappear,
but for now it's really handy
because you'll get to see how many posts have been up
since you've gone and read the last time,
so it makes it really, really easy
so you're not re-reading a lot of stuff.
Again, you're welcome to come in here on some of our previous books.
We did do Motherless Brooklyn as a group as well as Just Mercy,
and for both of these we had video content
that we were able to record here on campus
with Brian Stevenson and Jonathan Latham,
so please get in there
and take a look at what we were able to get.
You've got videos here,
you can come down to "More Videos"
and that will open the screen to all the videos we've posted before.
And then we also have "Events."
So that this time we don't have any events in here
but there will be a couple populated coming up soon.
We are looking to have some intimate book discussions
in different regional cities.
We have a couple of hosts currently in the San Diego area,
the Bay Area of California, and New York.
If you're interested in being a host,
please do not hesitate to reach out to our team
and we can let you know kind of what the expectations are
and in what ways the college can support you
in getting a book discussion off the ground in your local area.
If you have friends,
say other alumni or parents or other students
or faculty members that you are friends with on Good Reads,
that would probably populate right here,
as well as down here you can see all of our members.
And, you know, some have filled out their profiles and some have not,
so that is something that it is really nice
when you're able to get in there
and, you know, potentially put up a photo if you would like,
as well as fill out some information with your profile,
so other alums know who is who.
A little bit further down we have the "Upcoming Reads"
so we have "The Unwinding" next month,
and that will go the duration of October.
We've got "The Founding Brothers",
which is our November read,
and we chose to go with the December read
actually spanning it over December and January
because we know everybody is extremely busy,
typically, during the December month,
so that will be over the course of two months.
So that's what we have selected right now,
I would expect to have the next announcement for spring reads
in probably mid to late January,
and then again we'll do recommendations
for the summer of 2017
rather than having group discussions.
Down here is our general bookshelf
and you'll get to see all of the books that we have either recommended
or that we have read together as a group.
So that is the entire page,
if you decide to go with this view.
But as I had said, there's some quick links
that make it a little bit easier to navigate the page.
So over here on the right hand side we've got "Group Home"
which you can always come back to this home page,
we've got "Bookshelf," "Discussions"
and a variety of other ones,
I'm going to go ahead and go one by one with those.
This is the way that I choose to navigate the page,
just because I feel it's a little bit easier
as well as there's some extra options
that you'll receive through these quick links versus
just taking a scan over the whole page.
So when we opt into "Bookshelf" here
you'll automatically populate all of the books
that we've recommended,
similar to that main page.
But you do have the option,
we are narrowing these down into smaller categories.
So here our featured booklist would be just the books
that we have read together.
Our Pomona Alumni authored books,
this could be something that's featured or recommended,
but it is written by an alumni author,
currently I don't have this populated
but you should see books begin to show up here shortly.
And then Pomona Faculty authored books is another great one.
So in this case,
Motherless Brooklyn was one of the books that we featured,
and we read together back in May,
but it's also authored by one of our faculty members
so we went ahead and added that book into this book list,
and then up here you'll also see the book by Susan McWilliams,
The Best Kind of College,
was not something that we read as a group
but it was a summer recommendation
and so we've got that populated in here.
I'm going to go back to that main page,
and we'll jump into Discussions.
Discussions, again, we highly encourage folks to get in here
as we kind of build up our activity
I think everybody will gain more and more out of the virtual reads.
We do look forward to having in-person reads
but there's so many of you
that we know are not in those regional areas
and hope that this discussion will allow you to participate as well.
So as you'll see, it could be a variety of welcome messages,
it could be discussion questions, news,
so this, MacArthur Grant,
we were excited to hear
that Professor Rankin just received the MacArthur Fellowship,
and so we wanted to share that information out to everybody.
And then down here again we had our summer recommendations,
new book announcement,
there's a variety of things.
We do try to folder these,
so to make it a little bit easier, you can collapse these down,
so that way you're not staring at as much information.
So I'm going to go ahead and hit "Group Home" over here
and go back to that main page again.
Another area I'd like to show,
Challenges we're currently not using, as well as Polls,
but I will jump into Events.
Although there's nothing here now,
if you are in one of our regional areas
that we will be holding in-person events,
I highly encourage you to check this area out on a regular basis,
to see if we're going to be bringing an in-person event to your area.
These will be small events,
likely at people's homes, coffee shops,
or other things like that.
And you'll RSVP through here,
and we'll try to keep as much communication
through the Good Reads group.
So those will show up shortly.
Photos.
Currently we only have one photo
but there may be others that populate in here
if you want to see later.
Videos are definitely an area I encourage.
So for those of you that are currently using the Good Reads mobile app,
you will lose out on this feature.
So I highly encourage you to get in here and take a look from a web browser,
that way you are able to see the video content.
The mobile app, although it's convenient,
we do miss quite a few features on that,
it's very basic with really just the Discussion feature.
So if you get a chance, get in here
and take a look at the videos we've posted.
On here you'll see some of these are just things
that we've pulled and wanted to highlight from YouTube.
Other things like the Master Class was something
that was actually recorded here at Pomona
when Brian Stevenson was on campus to do a talk with the campus.
So there will be an additional one coming up here soon,
we have been able to record a few other things,
and the Jonathan Latham video is one of those,
it isn't populated here.
We did currently have it up on our Facebook page
but we want to get it into the group,
so you should be seeing that shortly.
And then you're welcome to invite other people,
so this is where you would do so.
You can invite them if they're already on here,
if they're on Facebook
and you're friends with them you can do it that way.
You can also just put in an email address
and that will send an invite directly to their email.
So that's really it for the overview
of the actual Pomona College Book Club page.
One of the other things I wanted to highlight
was notification preferences and profiles
that I had mentioned earlier.
So you'll go up to this little icon here,
it looks like a person reading a book.
And when you go up here, you'll go to Account Settings.
And in Account Settings
this is where you can choose to upload a photo,
you can change your profile.
One of the things I've seen quite a few alums and parents doing
is adding their graduation year to their end of their last name
or in, for parents, you know,
putting the P2015 to identify them as a parent.
So that's something that by no means is required
but is kind of nice for those of you that have added it,
it's really great to see,
you know, what class year you're from,
as well as adding that to when you're posting in discussion threads,
you're always welcome to do that.
There's other settings that you can go through here that you can,
you know, see who wants to view your profile
or who you want to allow to view your profile,
setting up emails
and how often you want to receive those.
Under this email feature,
way down at the bottom,
there is the group email preferences,
and this is where I said you can go back
and update your notification preferences,
so if you find that the digest is too often,
then you can go ahead and do Notify Only or None.
I would highly encourage to keep it on Digest
and maybe just change how often you receive them,
if you want them daily or you want them weekly.
I currently have mine set up for daily,
and although I don't get a daily digest every day,
if there is discussion or somebody posting,
then I will receive a digest.
If the group is quiet for that day I don't receive them.
So currently that is perfect for me,
but many of you might just want to do it weekly,
going into your weekend and seeing what's going on
and how you can tune in.
So other than that, that's pretty much it for us.
I appreciate all of your time and your participation in this,
this is something that we're very excited
to have be a part of our alumni learning and career programs.
And if you have any questions,
feel free to either post them to the group
or you're welcome to email alumni@pomona.edu
and that email address comes to the Seaver House
and can be disseminated out from there
mattering on what the question is,
who the best person to answer it is.
So, Sagehens, I look forward to seeing you interact
and participate in the book club.
We're always open to recommendations or updates and notification
on maybe a new book that you potentially could have authored
or somebody else you may know,
so we always like to hear what Sagehens are out there doing
so please feel free to get in contact
and again, just really appreciate your participation.