Book Trailers with Animoto

Step Inside the Book & Let the Digital World Enwrap You

Presented by Colette Husford, Shenandoah High School

Book trailers are like movie trailers and are fun and easy to make. You and your patrons, young and old, can create amazing book trailers by using the website, Animoto, http://animoto.com/. It’s free to sign up, but the free account limits your choices of videos, backgrounds, pictures, and music. Mostly, it limits the length of each video to 30 seconds. Upgrading lets you make full length videos, more than enough for a book trailer. Libraries can probably sign up for a free educator’s account, but that involves applying for an educator’s code and I haven’t pursued that yet. With an educator’s account, the user can set up individual accounts for students.

Windows Movie Maker lets you do the same sorts of videos, but Animoto is faster and easier to use.

You are limited in the number of words that can be used, so it will be helpful to your kids to give them a worksheet to plan their book trailer before they start: http://www.ilfonline.org/clientuploads/Animoto%20Rubric.pdf.

All handouts are available from the ILF site:

http://www.ilfonline.org/main/2012-annual-conference-handouts-and-presentations/

For the PowerPoint from this presentation, scroll down to:

‘Step Inside the Book & Let the Digital World Enwrap You Power Point’

The presenter has many book trailers posted on her school’s library media page. They were created by high school students:

http://www.shenandoah.k12.in.us/education/components/links/links.php?sectiondetailid=3511&linkid=nav-menu-container-4-22669

They are on the Shenandoah High School site, www.shenandoah.k12.in.us. Click on ‘School Media Center.

See some of our recently created videos on the Cedar Lake Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cedar-Lake-Branch-Library/121851962662

And on the Teen blog:

http://cedarlakelibrary.blogspot.com/

This is a great way to encourage narrative skills along with creativity and comprehension. So far the youngest child to make one of these book trailers is a four-year-old. She had to think about the characters, plot, and the most important things that happened in the book. And she had a great time doing it. Of course, older kids enjoy this too and I anticipate using Animoto most with the teens here at the library.

PowerPoint (in pdf form) all about making book trailers from Animoto.