Re-Forestation+Projects

The Fan Video contest is back! This year’s re-Forest Interactive site will be launching again soon, enabling readers from all age groups to share their reactions to this year’s titles online – to rate, comment, and connect with other readers. Look for a separate announcement introducing the launch of the online communities in your inbox next week. In the meantime, we wanted to encourage you and your readers to begin thinking about producing Fan Videos in support of their favourite author and title. What’s a Fan Video? A Fan Video is simply a chance for readers to respond to a title in creative way, and in a format that we hope encourages fans to share their enthusiasm for a title with others: with a video. Think of it as a “trailer” for a book. Get started by watching last year’s contest winners – and listening to them share their experiences! Last year, the grand prize was awarded to a group of four students who produced a live action video in response to Gravity Journal, a 2009 White Pine nominee. The video is still live here <[]> on YouTube. (Note the author of the book’s enthusiastic response to her fans in the comments!) You can also listen to the students who created the video sharing their experiences here <[]> , as well as the librarian from Holy Cross Secondary School in Strathroy, ON, sharing her experiences with the re-Forest initiative last year, here <[]>. The Runner Up video, was produced by a group of Grade four to six students, in response to the Peril at Pier 9, a 2009 Silver Birch nominee, and can be viewed here <[]> , from last year’s site. (Just click on the “Video” tab at the bottom of the page.) Fun, but also lots of great potential curriculum tie-ins As always, we’re very much committed to ensuring that the Forest titles are read for recreational purposes only. But for interested Media Literacy teachers the Fan Video contest may well provide a great context to try something new – and to motivate students to push the boundaries in new ways! This page on the wiki, provides some high level ideas for curriculum tie-ins that you might share with others. The same great prizes as last year – This year, we’ll be making the same amazing prizes available to the winning teams, for both the school behind the participating students, and the students themselves: for the school (or library) behind the winning team, a “multi-media prize pack” that includes a Macbook, and a flip video camera that we hope will enable ever greater creative endeavours...and for the students, an iPod touch. Get started now – for a April 30, 2010 submission deadline. Just in time for videos to be screened and shared with other readers at this year’s Harbourfront, It’s easier to get started than you might think. Full details will be available from the re-Forest Interactive site next week. But in the meantime, for teachers and teacher librarians, this wiki, updated from last year will give you the basics. Start here! For those who find the editing piece of video creation a bit daunting, and are looking for a simpler approach, there’s also a new option this year, using animoto.com. The application doesn’t offer the same creative control, but the results are often satisfying for younger users in particular. Take a look at this simple sample <[]> created by a public library staff member last year for Twilight – in just a few minutes! (Short videos –are free to produce and have hosted; longer videos require a $30 annual subscription, or $3 per video.) General wiki: http://reforestinteractive.wikispaces.com/ Curriculum links: http://reforestinteractive.wikispaces.com/Curriculum+Connections Happy Reading! From for the Forest® Folks and the Ontario Library Association