I was afraid that the wonderful comments from Larry Bedenbaugh of University of Central Florida would get buried in the Comments of this blog and not pop out at the readers who most needed to see them.
Larry not only turned me on to new examples of promotional videos for books, but a searching problem. While I was searching “book trailers”, folks (especially those in the library world) were also calling them “digital booktalking.” Duh!
So my friends, we can link to these already produced videos and/or we can use them to inspire students to create their own. Great examples of student contributions to the Read/Write Web! I honestly cannot wait to share these with my own students and faculty. For those of you who are afraid, these are really not hard to produce. iMovie and other like applications are addictive learning tools. Ask some kids to get you started.
Larry turned me on to two efforts using student-produced video to promote student reading and they are pretty darn fabulous.
He wrote:
I am constantly on the lookout for examples to showcase as I preach the value of Digital Book Trailers. Two sites you may want to link to are Tucson-Pima Public Library Teen Summer Reading and UCF’s Digital Booktalk . I keep coming across singular examples, but these two sites have multiple trailers.
Although these examples (and yours) are more high end, I have seen videos produced that required no more than some combination of the free/inexpensive software that is available on either computer platform (e.g., iPhoto, iMovie, Windows Movie Maker of Photo Story), images, music/sound effects, and/or voice overs. These projects combine two of my passions, technology and books, and can be created by students at any level.
Among the booktalks at UCF are:
1984
Abarat
Alas, Babylon
The City of Ember
Crime and Punishment
Drive By
Esperanza Rising
Fahrenheit 451
Heir Apparent
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Lord of the Flies
Losing Forever
The Martian Chronicles
Monster
Moonlight Becomes You
Mutiny on the Bounty
Nothing but the Truth
The Pearl
Tangerine
To Kill a Mockingbird
When My Name Was Keoko
Among the booktalks at Tuscon-Pima are:
CUT by Patricia McCormick
View Trailer in Windows Media Player
THE HOUSE OF THE SCORPION
by Nancy Farmer
View Trailer in Windows Media Player
In Spanish/En Español:
BTW, I spoke to a major children’s publisher at ALA and I have a feeling they may be onboard with digital booktalking sometime in the near future.
