Virtual Storytime with Jarrett Krosoczka

On Tuesday some of my students were treated to a "wicked awesome" virtual story time with author Jarrett Krosoczka as he introduced his new picture book Ollie The Purple Elephant.

For most of my kindergarten students this was not only the first time they had seen a virtual visit (Jarrett did the visits every hour on the hour via his UStream channel from 9am-5pm) but also the first time they had ever seen a REAL author.  We were able to interact with Jarrett by posting questions using the chat function on UStream. My kids were SOOO excited when Jarrett answered our questions "ON TV" (as one of my kids told me later).

I am sure that Jarrett was tired by the end of the day, but I can guarantee you that I will be ordering MANY copies of this book, my students were already asking to check out a copy of Ollie right after the story time.

Of course technology always doesn't work, I had a group of 2nd graders in at the noon story time and we could never connect to watch, not sure if it was on my end or the fact that there seemed to be over 100 people viewing the UStream channel at that moment, but we didn't have any problems any other time (we tuned in two other times on Tuesday).

Thanks to authors like Jarrett for taking time out of your schedules to make time for our kids and give them opportunities like this to interact with authors!