Bookflix – Promoting reading for pleasure.

After being shown the @klslangley Bookflix tweet by my wife (an avid book worm and English teacher) I was inspired and excited to make our very own using Keynote. To be honest, any excuse to play around on Keynote and make something!

Sitting waiting for my hair to be cut in the Barbers, I started to collect the front covers of the books that feature. Searching Amazon and then saving the image to my camera roll or using a screenshot, I managed to collect nearly 60 book covers in a relatively short amount of time.

All of the books that feature in our Bookflix are the recommended books for each keystage and are already shared with our students via our VLE. Bookflix however, will be more visible to students, staff and parents. Using TrilbyTV with our physical screens around the school site, students will see the recommended reading books regularly and hopefully with encourage students to read for pleasure.

To make the movie, I used Keynote and exported to a Movie which I then uploaded to TrilbyTV. You can download the template or the video file here.

Top Tips…

1. Find the highest resolution image of the book covers as possible but don’t spend ages looking for it!
2. If appropriate, resize all of the covers to the same size.
3. Arrange all book covers so that the distance between them is consistent.
4. Group all of the book covers and use the Magic Move transition in Keynote to provide a smooth movement to give the impression of scrolling. Make sure the objects stay in the same Y position.
5. For logos, use similar fonts or a Logo Generator. The one that used can be accessed here.
6. Use the template and replace some of the book covers, un group and replace individual covers.

Feel free to modify the template to suit your needs. A good friend of mine Dan Oakes has built in recommendations from staff and students.