"Our America" Book Trailers, Lindsey Mangurten, Librarian, Lincoln Park High School

For the next three days I will be working with an English class. The students are creating book trailers for the book “Our America”. We will be using the iPads and the app iMovie book trailers to complete this assignment.

Day One

Today the students spent the day finding photos to use for their trailer. With the help of their teachers most of the students were able to find 15-20 images. I demonstrated to the students how to search and save an image to the camera roll. Both teachers helped guide the students with what images to look for based on the class book. The plan for tomorrow is to demonstrate iMovie trailers. We had one or two glitches today. Some of the photos from Google images would not allow the students to save image to the camera roll. I’m not sure why that was happening but I suspect the iPad didn’t like the format the picture was in. Other than that the students had an easy time finding relevant photos and saving them to the camera roll.

Day Two

Today I demonstrated how to start a new iMovie trailer and the timeline. Two of the students excelled in today's task and finished their movies completely. It was amazing to see the students pick up the technology so quickly. I felt like such a proud librarian watching our self-contained students thrive creating a book trailer using the iPads. Today was one of those days that I am so proud to be a school librarian.

Day Three

Today two of the students finished their projects and ran around the school to show off their finished product to all of their other teachers. The students and teacher enjoyed this project so much. The teacher told me she is going to work this into the curriculum for all of their class novels for next year as well as spread  the word to other teachers. Hopefully, we will have a high demand for similar projects.

The book trailer template on iMovie seems to be very intuitive and easy to use. Some of the students have asked about changing the music or editing the photos differently which seem to not be an option. Overall, I would say this was a success.