How Beanstack Is Building Reading Habits One Scan at a Time

Founded by Zoobean in 2013 by a husband-and-wife duo with backgrounds in education, Beanstack began as a tool to help families find personalized monthly book recommendations focused on non-traditional genres and interests. Over time, the edtech business evolved into a powerful reading challenge and logging platform used by thousands of schools, libraries, and organizations around the globe. 

By integrating innovative features like high-performance book barcode scanning powered by Scandit Smart Data Capture and digital reading challenges, Beanstack now supports millions of students in building consistent reading habits, as well as educators and librarians in their mission to make reading assignments fun.

“There's a lot of complexity to scanning, and we learned early on that Scandit does an awesome job at it. We were immediately impressed with how easy it was to scan and how forgiving it was, especially for younger users.”

Kelly Hiser, VP of Product and Client Engagement at Beanstack by Zoobean

Challenge

After years of successfully powering summer reading programs for many US libraries, Beanstack expanded into the K-12 (i.e., kindergarten to grade 12) sector. Beanstack’s mission to motivate students to read more and implicitly improve their academic achievements rapidly scaled. 

Yet operating at scale in school environments posed several challenges. Firstly, students as young as five would use Beanstack, which meant digital book logs had to be super easy to do. Scanning the barcode accompanying the ISBN on the back of each book would spare children from the time-consuming task of typing in book information, not to mention saving them from making any input mistakes. But only if scanning happened quickly and accurately.

“Logging reading is the fundamental action that kids take in our solution. So any way we can simplify it is welcome,” said Hiser. 

Secondly, Beanstack (as other academic tools) would be used on district-owned laptops (e.g., Chromebooks) or tablets (e.g., iPads), scenarios which require progressive web applications (PWAs) within the browser. For scanning in particular, Beanstack would rely on these devices’ cameras, which could be either front-facing or back-facing, and often average in performance. 

The open-source scanning solution that powered Beanstack until its sudden spike in growth was not up to these challenges. Zoobean was in need of a robust, intuitive, and versatile scanning solution that would work on a wide array of camera-based devices — and it needed it fast to keep enabling millions of students to complete their logging and reading challenges.

Solution

Through some product research, the Zoobean team found the Scandit Barcode Scanner SDK for the Web and gave it a go using readily available documentation. After a smooth and quick implementation, it soon became apparent that it ticked off all the performance boxes: 

• Lightning-fast scanning speed, because one can’t afford to waste time when dealing with short attention spans
• Handles tough codes such as damaged or faded barcodes on books passed down from generation to generation, or bestsellers borrowed by thousands from the library
• Scans at the weirdest angles, handy when eagerly scanning in less-than-ideal environments like a bumpy ride home 
• Scans in low light, great when a book keeps readers way past their bedtime, maybe with a flashlight under the covers

What’s more, Scandit works on more than 20,000 device types, including lower-end devices, so schools and students can be assured of scanning performance regardless of their device.

“We work with kids of all ages, and we want to make it as easy as possible for them to log their independent reading. When you think about a kindergartner or even a second or third grader, they are not the best typers, but if you can get them to click on a little scan icon, hold up a book to their Chromebook’s camera, and scan it, it makes the whole process a lot easier,” said Hiser. 

The new scanner was officially launched in January 2021 and rapidly became a “wow” feature in product demos.

Scandit’s barcode scanning also got positive feedback from the toughest critics out there: “Kids find scanning fun, especially since it triggers this really satisfying beep, and then you automatically get an image of your book, and the title gets populated. The entire scanning experience aligns nicely with all the different gamification elements that we offer.” 

Indeed, scanning is only half the equation. Fully upholding the “Fitbit for reading” vision, the book scanner works in symbiosis with other exciting features offered by Beanstack, like a reading timer, reading streaks, and all-time reading logs that together incentivize students to read more.

Results

Currently, Beanstack is deployed across 7,400+ schools in 300+ US districts, with more than 16.5 million students and staff having access to it, should they wish to. Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK for the Web currently counts more than 500k scans per month across 600k active devices, personal and shared alike. It’s been registering continuous growth since its 2021 implementation, meaning reading is well on its way to becoming a daily habit for all students, from avid readers and book lovers to beginning readers and those who struggle. 

When reflecting upon the five-year-and-counting collaboration with Scandit, Hiser mentions “we've never had to reach out to Scandit support because we've never had a problem with the scanner, which is pretty impressive.”

The platform recently got even cooler thanks to Book Talks with Benny the Bean, an AI-powered assistant that can discuss plotlines and offer friendly nudges to keep reading without the added pressure of quizzes and grading, increasing reading accountability and integrity in a smart, student-centred way. 

Beanstack also empowers educators and librarians. Thanks to the real-time and accurate data supplied by the scanning engine into personalized dashboards, they can create reading competitions and community goals, offer prizes and recognition, identify trends, increase book circulation, and ultimately improve academic outcomes and literacy levels.