Tag: Book Trailers

Creating Book Trailers: A Lesson Exploring Personal Craft and Creativity

Posted on by Annie Tremonte

 

My final blog post of the academic quarter in my graduate program in Digital Education Leadership is here and I am eager to share my finished individual project: Creating Book Trailers: A Lesson Exploring Craft and Creativity. This is a topic that I previously explored in my post,  ISTE 1: Digital Storytelling with Book Trailers. Eager to return to book trailers and design a lesson for my students, the lesson was crafted using the ASSURE model. Until this project, I had never used this model before. Although I found it to be overly detailed for regular use, it is also a very thorough method of lesson design.

I also had the opportunity to implement this lesson during its creation, revising the lesson in real time to meet student needs. While this project was new territory for me, allowing more student choice and use of individualized technology than ever before, I can attest to its success. Check out the media gallery above to see some screenshots of their work. I hope to share some of their fully finished products soon! If you already use book trailers in your classroom or are interested in trying to, I encourage you to review the lesson and provide your feedback in the comments.

Creating Book Trailers: A Lesson Exploring Craft and Creativity

ISTE Student 1: Digital Storytelling with Book Trailers

Posted on by Annie Tremonte

The next step in my graduate coursework in Digital Education Leadership is to work my way through the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Student Standards in order to implement technology for effective teaching, learning, and assessment. First, I will address ISTE 1 by focusing on how students use technology to apply existing knowledge to new ideas. One of my educational philosophies is that creativity is more effortlessly fostered when students are first equipped with basic tools in their pockets.

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Can providing students with helpful tools now foster innovation in the future?

A student in an art class to whom a lump of clay is given can perhaps be innovative and creative in his or her manipulation. However, this same student, if provided with a background knowledge of the clay’s composition, the temperature and method of firing, and the instruments and hand techniques used to manipulate it, can use this information in conjunction with personal ideas to break new ground. In my experience, this same principle applies to educational technology. Unfortunately, I have often found that students who are given free choice often gravitate towards the same tools they have used before. Perhaps, front loading instruction around certain tools can prepare students for experimentation and innovation later. With this as an important consideration in mind, I posed the following question:

“How can students use their knowledge of a recently read book to create a teaser for this novel? What tools would allow students to both engage a potential new reader and share important literary elements of the story (such as tone, theme, characterization, setting, etc.) in a structured but creative way?”

Forever on a quest to engage new readers, I hope to provide opportunities for my middle school language arts students to work with texts in an engaging, yet still structured way. While I have always required outside reading from students, I am averse to traditional book reports, perhaps due to my own hatred of reading as adolescent. I attempt to avoid such a fate for my own students. Student choice in book selection is an easy first step in encouraging reading for pleasure. The second step is implementing technology effectively.

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