Book trailer collaboration with another international school

Collaboration. One of my goals as a librarian.  Lessons are more meaningful if you collaborate with the teacher in the classroom and pepper your library skills in a lesson that supports the classroom curriculum.

Welcome to the 21st century and the World Wide Web. Today collaboration has taken on a whole new meaning. It is a way to communicate with others that previously was not possible. Yeehaw, I say! Grab a lasso and reach out globally - try to rope a few classrooms into your lessons. It is a rich experience.

Two years ago Jeff Utecht suggested I follow this librarian at ISB , Tara Ethridge, who liked to use technology in her library. I have stolen a few of her great lesson ideas and we started collaborating on some library projects. The lastest project we began together was a grade 2 video book trailer. I worked with several grade 2 classes and created a book trailer blog and she worked with one grade 2 class and made a Wiki. I had one class watch her book trailers and leave comments.

What I liked about this lesson was seeing the differences in how we did the lessons. The ISB Wiki page used audio with a picture from Fotobabble, whereas my students used an iRig microphone with an iTouch. When I surveyed the kids after my project one of the things they said was they were scared. An audio project would eliminate this. Next year I want to give them the option of using audio or video. I also liked the format ISB used with students explaining why they would recommend this book. I think I'll add this to mine. Plus, they did a nice job adding more book details - I think we could have beefed ours up a bit.

What I didn't like about the Wiki page was that it was hard leaving comments. I had to have the students handwrite them and then type them under the discussion posts myself. The comments are on a page separate from the book trailers.  It's easier commenting directly on a blog under the trailer. Also, the audio was so soft, our students couldn't hear a lot of the book trailers (we were using 4 year-old computers). That is one of the strengths with the iRig microphone. The audio is fantastic.

Honestly, isn't this incredible? We are sharing content from Taipei to Thailand. Students are motivated. I'm motivated. It's really fun. Jump on that horse and corral a classroom. It's worth it.