Vine Video Book Trailers

Students recently finished their first book report assignment of the school year. Everyone individually  read a book by Roald Dahl, created a poster about the book, wrote a brief summary and presented their poster to the class. 

We decided to take this project to the next level, by adding a unique technology facet to the assignment. Students used this awesome Vine video storyboard template created by Ms. Gwyneth Jones who was actually the inspiration for this entire lesson!

Using the storyboard, they wrote out the action and the dialogue that they wanted in each brief scene. Then, students recorded their book trailer with a partner or small group using the Vine App on the iPad. 

Vine is a short-form video sharing service. I was excited to try it with my students because iMovie (which I also love) tends to be very time-consuming. Vine allows students to record six second video clips which loop. I liked this project because it also forced students to really think about their message because it had to be very concise. It also allowed students to be creative and since their videos are published, they are also reaching an authentic audience. True 21st Century Learning in action! 

Once all the videos were uploaded to my Vine Channel, students found the video they had created and copied the link. Once the link was on the clipboard, they went to goo.gl and shortened the URL. Next, the clicked on "details" to generated a QR Code, which linked back to their video. Once they accessed the QR Code, students copied the image and pasted it into a Google doc. 

They typed their name underneath using any font they chose and shared the document with me so I could print it. 

Once the QR Codes were printed, they mounted them to a piece of colored paper and affixed it to their poster.

Pretty fancy!

We have two walls of very unique posters about assorted Roald Dahl books!

Do you see the QR Code?

Next came the most fun part of the entire project! Students got to use an iPad and scan all the QR Codes and watch the Vine video book trailers created by their classmates. 

There were many steps to this project: storyboarding the script, recording and producing the video, finding the URL, linking the URL to a QR Code, inserting the QR Code into a Google doc, sharing the doc with me and then adding the physical QR Code to the poster and scanning it. However, my 1st and 2nd grade students never cease to amaze me and glided through the process. This will not be the last time we use Vine or QR Codes in class this year! View one of our Vine video book trailers below or go to my Vine Channel to see all of them.