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Dr. Teshia Roby creates educational mobile app called Good Books Lookup
Dr. Teshia Roby creates educational mobile app called Good Books Lookup
![Stack of Books](../img/news/goodbooks.jpg)
Dr. Teshia Roby, a faculty member in the Department of Education, recently co-created a mobile application called Good Books Lookup. This application is designed to help parents find books the reading level and interests of their children.
Dr. Roby said of the creation of the app,
My husband I and I developed an educational mobile app. It is called Good Books Lookup. I built it because of necessity; my hubby built it because of the challenge.The Good Books Lookup app was approved by and is available through both the iTunes Store the Android Marketplace.
I’m a busy mom of two boys ages 11, and 8. Both attend Cal Aero Preserve Academy where they participate in the Accelerated Reader program. Accelerated Reader (or “AR” is it is often called) requires students to obtain points by taking reading comprehension quizzes on books that are within their teacher-identified reading ranges (we educators know it as their Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD) as assessed by the school. Teachers also set total quiz point goals for their students each trimester.
One of my biggest challenges each trimester was finding books within each of the boys' interests that were also within their required reading ranges. And sometimes by the end of the trimester, I was looking for books with quizzes worth a certain number of points to help my oldest son cross his reading goal finish line. I searched and searched for an app that could help with that. There was no single app that did all that I needed it to do.
One day, while sitting on the floor with a pile of books, accessing the AR website on my laptop, typing in the book titles book by book, I lamented to my husband, Fred, that there has to be an easier way to do this. I complained that I couldn’t believe that an app didn't exists for this. He responded matter-of-factly, “Well, let’s build one. I’m up for it!” So we did it! I conceptualized the flow of the Good Books Lookup app, planned the user interface, and provided the graphic art. Fred was the sole developer of both the iOS and Android versions of the app.