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.
