Virtual Author Visits Are Worth Trying

There is nothing more rewarding as a writer than to share a new book with a roomful of excited kids who love animals and are hungry for stories on subjects they care about. The excitement grows both ways as I sense their focus and field their many questions.

Dearborn Park School teacher and librarian Craig Seasholes sees meaningful magic in author visits: “Kids who meet authors begin to understand that reading is a personal relationship to ideas in a book, realizing that behind every text is a hard-working adult, writing for them.” Having done hundreds of school visits and library events, I have learned that meeting an author motivates students to read more, write more, and share what they learn with others.

Unfortunately, many school districts have had to cut extracurricular events like author visits from their budget. But with new, more affordable technologies at their disposal, schools and libraries are beginning to experiment with virtual author visits. According to the Edutopia Blog, platforms like Skype, Google Hangouts, and Zoom have made it easier than ever to host published authors in the classroom. Even in the most rural parts of the country.

I recently did my first virtual author visit with an elementary school in Boston, Massachusetts. The librarian and I did a technology test run the day before the scheduled visit to make sure that the sound and picture in the application worked and that I could use my power point photos and videos as part of the 45-minute presentation. 

Here is how she described the virtual visit: "We did a Google hangout with Clare Hodgson Meeker in two separate 3rd and 4th grade classrooms simultaneously. She kept over 120 students engaged as she explained how she wrote her book Growing Up Gorilla. She also explained how hard non-fiction writing can be as you can't anthropomorphize.”

I was delighted to be able to look at the students’ faces and engage with them directly as if I were standing in front of the classrooms. I also answered questions that the students typed in as they appeared in the chat function in the margin of my computer screen. You can’t beat the convenience of virtual visits and they are more economical too without having to travel across the country from my home office in California. If you would like more information or to schedule a virtual author visit, please contact me here.