Book Trailers

The last session I want to post about was that of the AWESOME Naomi Bates.  Naomi and I actually met through the virtual world of the YALSA Book listserv.  She would post some pretty awesome booktrailers, and I wanted to use them.  I also wanted the advice of a great, seasoned high school librarian.  So I called her.  (God I love google and its ability to easily allow cyber-stalking).  She graciously talked to me for quite a while offering great advice and tons of support.  When she told me she was presenting at the conference, I rearranged my plans so I could stay an extra day and attend.  I'm so glad I did.

Naomi talked about many different resources available for building book trailers.  She has compiled a really great livebinder found here http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=13228.  So, the first new thing I want to talk about is, well, livebinders.  This is a pretty cool way to organize your information.  It's basically a virtual three-ring binder.  The possible applications in the classroom are vast.

I actually have already used all of the video editing tools Naomi mentioned for other projects, so I didn't learn anything new there.  Note - check out the livebinder if you what to know more about video editing.  What I was interested in was where she got her video/images/music.  Copyright violation is, of course, a HUGE issue in schools.  Students and teachers alike blatantly violate copyright particularly with regard to music.  So, I will be using many of the sites listed in Naomi's livebinder for student use for multi-media projects.  There are quite a few there, but she recommends http://www.purple-planet.com/ for free music and http://www.morguefile.com/ and http://www.creativecommons.org/ for pictures.  I'm also going to encourage our creative student musicians to volunteer their work for use in other student productions.

I think I'll attempt creating booktrailers next year only if I cannot locate them already made.  Naomi's are great (http://www.nisdtx.org/Page/3590).  She also recommended signingupagain's youtube channel which are even better production wise (http://www.youtube.com/user/signingupagain) and http://www.booktrailersforall.com/ which is very searchable.

Here are two other great ideas from Naomi - 1.  Genere organized fiction.  She started this with her sci-fi collection and is going to organize her entire collection this way.  And I like it.  I've gotten mixed reaction to this idea, but I really think it is the way to go, and I'm going to work to get there.  Step one for me is to get spine labels on the fiction books.  I think that will make the process of reorganization easier.  2.  After school tech classes for students, not teachers - or maybe in addition to teachers.  We wrongly assume that our digital-age students know all there is to know about technology.  After school sessions on how to email an attachment or how to rename and save a file could really be helpful.