Book Trailers & Audiobooks

I. Book Trailers

“These students are reading and writing, but in modes and media that are different from the print literacies valued in school.” (Kajder, 2008)

I really think there is something to be said for the idea of having students engage in ‘alternative’ means of reading and writing because I feel that students will naturally be more interested and therefore more involved in the process of learning and expanding their knowledge. Kajder has found a way to boost academic achievement and excitement, through book trailers, podcasts and Internet discussions. The article points out how students are able to introduce their own interests in the class, which I think is necessary for students to feel invested in what they are doing in the classroom. As well, the benefit of having students learn how to create book trailers reaches beyond the classroom in the sense that students are learning valuable skills that they can take out in the real world and potentially use on a job or in college. The introduction and use of something like book trailers is in some ways necessary in order to keep students current with the trends of work and education life.

How one (that is, a teacher) is able to go about making all the components that Kajder discusses come together when there are 150 students involved in the process is mind-blowing. At one point Kajder writes: “students will work together to award three trailers with the highest honor—a place on the class’s weekly podcast, which is broadcast from the class’s password-protected Web site,” and all I can think is how, how, how, does this happen. A weekly podcast, award ceremony, and password-protected Web site…just a once a month podcast seems like a lot, let alone everything else mentioned. I would imagine however it was a process to get to the point of having so many technology components going at once, and so as a still new teacher with little experience with technology, I need to think about taking baby, not giant, steps towards integrating technology into my instruction.

Kajder, S. (2008). The book trailer: engaging teens through technologies. Educational Leadership 65(6).

II. Audiobooks

“Today we are blessed with audiobooks. Students should be able to listen and find the magic of interpretation as actors read aloud or participate in dramatizations…” (Weiss, 2008)

My Ah!Ha! moment while reading “The Sounds of Stories” came when my eyes crossed the above quotation. This moment was more of an ‘Ah! Ha! I can’t believe the writer is saying this,’ rather than a ‘this guy is genius’ moment. I am not sure if I stand alone in my belief that audiobooks, in fact, are not a blessing, but I’m willing to go ahead and say it. My experience, as a learner and listener to of audiobooks, has been less than satisfying. I find them difficult to follow, unless perhaps you were driving cross-country, and not nearly as rewarding as reading. This perhaps speaks to the kind of learner that I am and my preferences. Regarding the notion of “the magic of interpretation,” well, I’ve yet to have had that experience. The actors that I’ve listened to have been more boring than magical, and the different voices that they try to assume in a story are distracting and sometimes a bit laughable.

All that said, I do believe that as a teacher, because remember, I’ve been speaking a listener/learner, I could utilize audiobooks in valuable and meaningful ways. For example, audiobooks could be used for those students with disabilities that might require the type of learning that audiobooks provide, or perhaps even for reluctant readers, audiobooks could be a segue into literature. I do think audiobooks can be a nice compliment to a text, and perhaps could be used if there were portions of a class novel that students were struggling with, an audiobook could be used to try and help with students’ understanding. As well, as Weiss noted, audiobooks can be used constructively to help students with their listening skills. All and all, I am for audiobooks as a teacher and the uses it can have in the classroom, but as a listener, I will stick to the page.

Weiss, M. J. (2008) The sounds of stories. The Alan Review, 35(3), 79-81.