Book trailers

Just rediscovered this older post!

I'm really getting the hang of converting students' collaborative Keynote presentations into video podcasts - and I'm really loving adding free "Creative Commons" music as soundtracks!

I started to investigate "Creative Commons" sites last year, and found a few pieces of music that would have worked (my Stage 2 students had wanted copyright free music that you could cha cha or belly dance to, and we did find one free example of each!) but it all seemed too tricky last year, so our PowerPoints stayed mute.

However, the http://ccmixter.org/ website is well laid out and it is quite simple to search for "Creative Commons" music by theme, musician or style (I've found "scary", "happy" and "circus" style pieces via the search engine - but teachers must be beware of possible unsavoury lyrics. Stick with instrumentals only, unless you've previewed all the songs you will "listen to" with students). The site tells you the exact wording to place in the credits of the video podcast, movie or whatever media. After you've uploaded the podcast, you can relay the URL to http://ccmixter.org and they'll add the online link to their searchable database.

So, just in time for Book Week, you might like to see my students' "Mr Chicken goes to Paris" book trailer, and/or our "Across the Story Bridge" video podcast, and/or a revamped (from two 2009 "Flickr" slideshows) "Bear & Chook Adventures", based on ideas from the "Bear & Chook" books:

http://web.me.com/lindsay96/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html

According to viewer feedback, these video podcasts may require installing the latest version of Quicktime or, at least, clicking that you agree to MIME being associated with Quicktime on your computer. I've had the video podcasts working on Mac and PC, and they look really great on an IWB. (One teacher had an earlier version of Quicktime on her IWB to enable her to run Kid Pix, and the podcasts did refuse to run on her machine.)

I understand a site called http://freeplaymusic.com/ has a huge catalogue of music which can also be searched by "style" and "feel". However, their terms and conditions won't allow schools to use their music for uploading onto the web - but for things that are "in school" they are quite happy for students to use the material.

Last Friday, I was able to play one of our trailers to a group of students who were contributors to a brainstorm, only a week earlier, for many of the sequences, character suggestions, dialogue snippets. But the final shot list and script had been developed by a different group. It was such fun watching individual faces light up when "their" suggestion was suddenly up on the screen, as part of the cohesive whole. The power of collaborative writing, producing a final work which is greater than the sum of all the already-great smaller parts.

Meanwhile, Happy Book Week!