What it is: Bookcasting is actually a term I made up. It is essentially a podcast about a book. My third grade students just finished their first round of Bookcast recordings that we uploaded to a Wetpaint Wiki. A Bookcast is a movie trailer-like review of a book that students create and share with one another. My students used GarageBand to record their podcasts (you could also use a free tool like Audacity) and add sound effects, then they published the Bookcast on our class G-cast account, and finally embedded the media player onto our WetPaint wiki.
How to integrate Bookcasting into your curriculum: Bookcasting is a fun alternative to the standard book report. It allows kids to be creative and gives them a great sense of audience. Bookcasting also has the added benefit of acting as a book review for other students to listen to. Bookcasting makes story retell a lot of fun! My plan is to have a link to our WetPaint wiki in the library so that students can listen to a peer review of a book before they check it out.
Tips: I had all of my students create a Bookcast on the same book before reviewing on their own. This gave them an easy starting place but still provided room for creativity. Click on the Easy Reader link on our wiki to hear the Bookcasts the students created.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Bookcasting in your classroom.
I had a couple of my students create something similar to this. With my help, we wrote the review together and recorded the video. We have ours posted on TeacherTube. The girls are actually making their 3rd video next week.
http://www.teachertube.com/search_result.php?search_id=horacemann&x=0&y=0