Peer to Peer Book Recommendations the DoInk Way!

As part of our Core Ready Literacy program, 3rd graders read and create a book recommendation. Last year we used DoInk's Green Screen app and I helped the classes by doing the recording and then students uploaded their finished recommendations to Seesaw for parents to see. It's wonderful to have parents see what their children are doing at school, but I wanted students to have a more authentic audience and more creative ownership of their work so this year, I asked the teachers and their students if they would be willing to take it one step further. 

Here's what we did:

Disregard our rubber banded stand- LOL
It's called ingenuity when your iPad stand
doesn't acomodate a teacher's iPad mini.

First, students read their books and wrote their book reviews. Next, they grabbed a colored piece of 12x18 piece of construction paper (not green) and laid their book off to one side or the other and took a picture. This became the background for their video. Last year, we simply propped the books on a chair, but found that it wasn't as polished looking when we dropped those pics into green screen, plus the kids now get to choose their favorite color (it's a small thing, but sometimes, it's the little things that mean a lot). We had all of the kids take their pictures on the same iPad just to keep things moving along more smoothly for the next step.

Our next step was to record the book recommendations using DoInk. This year I wanted the students to record the videos for each other so I worked with a few students at a time to show them how to import their background image, how to reposition the person speaking to fit on the background, and how to save the recording when they were done. After working with a few students they then became the teachers for the next group. Empowering kids to be the teachers is always a positive in my opinion and the pride they had in being their own videographers was priceless! 

The best part...
Once students uploaded their recommendation to Seesaw, I went onto Seesaw, copied the QR code to their post, and then pasted it onto a Keynote template along with the book's title. These QR codes and their book are now displayed around our library for other students to scan. My hope is that their book recommendations will truly be a recommendation and that it will also encourage other students to want to create a book recommendations throughout the year so we can keep the buzz about books ongoing.