Gotta Keep Reading Video on Oprah’s Show Today

Got an unusual email from the boss, Dr. Ludgate, this morning saying that she wasn’t going to be able to make today’s graduation ceremony. Bummer. The reason for the absence was because the “Gotta Keep Reading“ video that we’d assisted in creating with Ocoee Middle School was going to be a segment on the Oprah Winfrey show today. What? Oprah’s people set up a satellite connection this morning so that she could talk to Ocoee Middle School principal Sharyn Gabriel, reading coach Janet Bergh and two students about the video, with the student body gathered in the same quad area where the video had been filmed last December. How’s that for a Friday morning wake-up call?

The segment featured a shorter version of the video and a little Q&A between Winfrey, Gabriel, Bergh and the students, and ended with Oprah announcing that Target Stores had been enlisted to help upgrade Ocoee’s library. Below is the original video and beneath that several stills of the 1,285 that I shot during the video shoot.

Hard to imagine that an idea shared last Fall in a downtown Orlando restaurant has resulted in an inspirational video that’ll be a life-long memory for the 1,700 students who participated and now has become part of the national conversation on the importance of reading.

image by joe bustillos

image by joe bustillos

image by joe bustillos

image by joe bustillos

image by joe bustillos

image by joe bustillos

sources:
all images by Joe Bustillos.

        

Gotta Keep Reading – Ocoee Middle School video

Dr. Ludgate, emdt program director wrote: “Ocoee Middle School is the state technology demonstration school for Florida- showcased every year at FETC. A few months ago the EMDT crew met with Sharyn Gabriel (principal) and a few staff to discuss a Flash Mob idea. They were so inspired by the Flash mob scene from the Oprah and Black Eyed Peas show- they wanted to try the same concept – educationally inspired. They hired a professional singer to write and sing lyrics related to reading and literacy to encourage kids to prepare and read for the FCAT test. “The amazing Full Sail Online Production team made this all happen- they even let the Ocoee Middle School production class shadow them and gave them mini-lessons throughout the shooting process.”

I was there taking still photos during the video shoot & the energy was amazing. If you look really carefully at 3:00 in the video I’m the little black dot on the extreme left of the screen by the trees taking pictures. What an amazing day.

Also, now the response videos are beginning to pop up (song pops up 1:40 in..) and I love that they “freeze” when the video stops because of buffering!):