The library has been hopping lately, what with English III research papers and what seems like every teacher needing to schedule research or computer time. This is by no means a complaint; the more use of the library the better! I’d much rather stay busy than be twiddling my thumbs. But if I seem a bit distracted lately, I’d like to share with you two tech projects that have taken over my mind, heart, and time:

The first is the Mayan documentary collaboration project with our Spanish teacher, Ms. Andrews. This isn’t exactly a new project as we tried it out last year with mediocre success. We’ve tweaked it this year and things seem to be going much better. We adjusted the grading rubric and gave students specific deadlines for turning in sections. Students have the option to work alone or in groups. They have to have a minimum of three topics per documentary (if more than 3 members to a group, each member has to contribute at least one topic). Topics cover such areas as religion, daily life, agriculture, architecture, sports, astronomy, writing, etc. Their first task is to research their assigned topic. I created a StreamlineSC assignment builder with images and video clips that the students could use in their project. I created a Mayan pathfinder listing books in the library as well as useful websites. Ms. Andrews also brought in additional books from the public library for students to choose images that I then scanned into the computer.

After they have gathered all of their “stuff” and have documented it on a citation page, they have to then plan out their section using a storyboard. This was a difficult concept for them to grasp and took much explaining on our parts. They kept comparing this to PowerPoint and didn’t understand that we aren’t allowing text except for titles and credits! Many of the students freaked out when we told them that they would be narrating their movies! The storyboard forced them to look at what they were gathering, determine relevance, and plan what they felt was important to say about their topic. At this point, I showed them the basics of using Windows Movie Maker and how to add narration to their sections. They have a few weeks to complete their sections and then I will instruct them on how to finalize their individual sections and combine them into one final documentary/movie.

While we know there will be some students who choose not to participate or will turn in shoddy work; that there are some who will do the bare minimum and are only grudgingly participating; it’s the ones who are excited about doing something different that I find a joy to watch. The ones who are finding WMM cool and who have a “we can do that!” fascination and attitude that make this project one I hope we continue to offer from year to year. If you are interested in the project outline and grading rubric, leave a message in the comments section and I’ll email them to you.

For my second favorite new project, you may not be aware that I’m a member of the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award program. The committee reads 75 consideration titles and narrows them down to 20 nominee titles for student to read and vote on their favorite. The committee decided that this year we’d like to produce podcasts for the individual nominee titles using the booktalks from our activity guide and make them available on the South Carolina Association of School Librarians (SCASL) webpage. Well, me being such a jump on board kinda gal and loving anything tech related immediately nominated my drama club kids to record the podcasts. Thankfully, the drama kids have been excited about this project, too. What we didn’t realize was how difficult it could be to simply read a booktalk into a microphone without any errors! I’ve only had one student successfully complete a one-take recording. Most have to start and stop over and over again and not always because of their mistakes. Because we have no studio or quiet room, the students keep getting interrupted by the intercom, the class change bell, students coming in and out of the library, etc. Originally I gave them this past Friday as the deadline, but with so many more left to record I’m going to have to see about recruiting additional students to help with the recording process. Otherwise, I’m going to have to record the rest of them myself, and while I don’t mind doing that (kinda fun actually) the whole point was to have teens recording them. Maybe a miracle will happen and we’ll get the rest of them recorded Monday! BTW, the podcasts will not be publicly posted until after the Young Adult Book Award booktalk session March 14th at the SCASL annual conference. Sorry.

Speaking of books, here is a site that I came across while searching for audiobooks: LibriVox provides free audiobooks of titles in the public domain. I only listened to a little of part 1 for Peter Pan (one of my all time favorite stories) and it is a pretty good recording so far.