Digital Booktalk

I exerted a good deal of effort in creating my digital booktalk. Initially, I spent a few days deciding what book I wanted to do. I ended up changing my book choice because I read this book with the little boy that I babysit and thought it had beautiful illustrations. I also loved the poetry format and felt that many children would love to read this book. The other book was a chapter book, so there were no pictures to share. I then decided to use iMovie, which I had never used before. First, I took pictures from the book and imported them into iMovie. Then, I had to re-read the book and write down a brief synopsis for each image. I then used the microphone on my computer to record these as voiceovers to go with each illustration. I had also never tried this before, and I had to adjust some settings to make it sound clear. It took me the longest time to do this part. Once I did a few, however, it was not too difficult. Last, I added music from iTunes, and it took awhile to find a song that was a good length and also matched my book. I had to adjust the length of some images in order for the song to not get cut off at the end, but it was simple to do. Overall, I was surprised to learn that iMovie is fairly easy to navigate. I enjoyed the process of creating my book, even thought I spent several hours on this assignment in order to complete it. I think it will be much faster in the future because I am not familiar with the tools it offers.

I thought that this was valuable because it allowed me to learn how to use a new program, iMovie. I am a new Mac user, so it is great that I could complete an assignment and learn more about the programs on my computer. Further, I was proud of myself for conquering a new program without any help. This assignment helped to increase my level of confidence in using (and comfort with) technology. Last, this is a great resource for my future classroom. I will definitely use this program again for other projects besides booktalks. Of course, I could also use this program to create other digital booktalks in order to get students excited about books that they will be reading.

This assignment impacts my future teaching because again, it has introduced me to another resource that I could utilize in the classroom. I shared my completed project with my roommates, and they were very engaged as they viewed it. I believe that my students would be too. Having a book presented in this format, with music, voice, and images, rather than me simply talking about a book, makes the book seem more enticing and exciting to read! Additionally, I would definitely let students use iMovie in order to create their own booktalks or other projects in my classroom. It is hands-on and fun, so it allows students to have a meaningful learning opportunity with technology. After each subsequent assignment, I am becoming more and more excited about incorporating technology into my classroom.