Honors English students at Waukon High School win U of I video contest
Students in the Honors English 10 class under the direction of Louise Wild at Waukon High School created and submitted a video for the "All the World's a Stage" contest sponsored by the University of Iowa's School of Library and Information Science in an effort to expose today's youth to the works of William Shakespeare. Pictured above at the recent presentation of the contest awards in the Waukon High School Library are the award-winning students and Waukon High School staff members with David Eichmann, Director of the School of Library and Information Science, and Christine Kolarik, Coordinator of the Teacher Librarian Program, at the University of Iowa. Submitted photo.
Winning video outlines plots of four popular Shakespeare plays, earns $2,000 cash prize
Students at Waukon High School created the winning video in a contest sponsored by the University of Iowa’s (U of I) School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) and inspired by the U of I Libraries’ Shakespeare at Iowa festival this fall. The contest, titled “All the World’s a Stage,” challenged K-12 students across Iowa to create a video demonstrating how Shakespeare is still relevant in classrooms today.
The winning video, titled “The Best of Shakespeare,” takes viewers on a quick tour of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays, summarizing the plots in general audience terms. Students wrote the script, directed the scenes, acted, and produced the video, which packed all the action into less than three minutes.
The Waukon High School students were part of the Honors English 10 course under the direction of Mrs. Louise Wild. Those students inlcluded Mary Vander Velden, Andrew Mellick, Megan O’Neill, Michael Headington, Micah Treptau, Nate Helgerson, Emma Roe, Robert Drew, Nicole Campbell, Taya Duehr, Cayla Nolting and Hunter Seigenthaler.
The Waukon students’ research, creativity and production efforts netted their high school a $2,000 cash prize from SLIS, to be used to fund the Waukon High School library. Their video can be viewed online at https://youtu.be/Cpu5A94uovI. The video was entered in the contest by uploading it to youtube and the youtube link for the video is also included in the University of Iowa library website for the Shakespeare display.
Wild said the project was introduced by studying five of Shakespeare’s plays, and the class was then divided into two groups of around 15 students each and each group produced a video with the guidance of Wild and her student teacher, Ms. Skillings. Both videos were entered in the contest and one of the videos was chosen as the overall winner of the contest.
"The judges stated that our winning video was a stand-out with all of the judges," Wild explained. "Our students are very fortunate to have the state of the art video equipment that we have at our high school for them to use in projects such as this one. As a teacher, it was very rewarding to see that our students here at Waukon High School are performing on such a superior scale statewide."
A video created by a student at Decorah High School received runner-up honors and a $1,000 prize for the school library. Titled “Learning to Love,” this video shares stories of struggle with love, self-identity and coming out. In less than five minutes, this video shows strength in vulnerability through real-life experiences, as well as those portrayed in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” - a story that prompted the video-maker to discover the importance of self love. Creating the video was student Emma Fretheim under the direction of teacher Kathryn Thompson. Fretheim's video can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84ESrPsoezo.
David Eichmann, Director of the U of I School of Library and Information Science, and Christine Kolarik, Coordinator of the Teacher Librarian Program at U of I, presented the awards to students, teachers and teacher librarians December 14 at their respective schools.
The video contest was one of more than 60 special events offered by the University of Iowa Libraries last fall, as it hosted “First Folio! The Book That Gave us Shakespeare,” a traveling exhibit honoring the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
During September 2016, an exhibit in the Main Library Gallery offered a rare opportunity to view the First Folio and provided a backdrop to engage Iowa’s K-12 students in learning about Shakespeare, his work, and why he is still relevant today. Although the gallery exhibit closed December 30, an ongoing exhibit can be viewed online at shakespeare.lib.uiowa.edu.
The SLIS-sponsored video contest, open to all Iowa students, was designed to be a student driven, active and creative endeavor, prompting them to learn about Shakespeare. SLIS trains teacher librarians through an accredited master’s degree program, and the contest engaged students with their local school libraries, many of which are overseen by SLIS alumni.
