Watching movies, buying books

As the opening scenes of Taylor Lautner’s latest thriller, “Abduction,” began, the cheers and whistles of middle school students could be heard when the teen star made his first appearance on the screen.

“That’s something we just don’t have the opportunity to hear much around here,” Laura Payne said. “We don’t have a movie theater in this part of the county, so it’s really nice that we’re able to do a little something about that and raise some greatly needed funds at the same time.”

Payne, the media specialist at Western Rockingham Middle School, helped take tickets and keep things running smoothly during last Thursday’s matinee edition of WRMS Movie Night – a fundraiser for the school’s e-books program. Payne said the project was developed by media and technology assistant Tammy Burke.

“Tammy gets all the credit. It was her brainchild from the start,” Payne said.

Since reading books electronically appears to be the “wave of the future,” Payne said schools and libraries are working to find ways to keep up with the changing technologies. Today’s students are more attuned to current technology and find it simpler to read assignments from their iPads, iPods or smartphones.

“With the system we’re developing now, students can access books from their home computers or any device that has Internet capability,” Payne said. “That means they don’t have to check out a hard copy from the library that could be lost or damaged. It also means we don’t have to worry about having a limited number of copies to go around for all the students in a class.”

The new system being developed is called a FollettShelf. It’s an online collection of books and research materials developed for individual schools that are accessible from anywhere by using unique IDs and passwords.

The funds raised from Movie Nights are used to purchase e-books to stock the school’s FollettShelf. Students then use their own devices – iPads, iPods, laptops, PCs or smartphones – to check out books from the system and read.

When the need for additional funds to purchase the e-books became obvious, Payne said Burke saw the potential available at the school’s auditorium. The WRMS facility seats 600, making it one of the largest in the county.

All that was needed was the technology to show movies with theater-quality image and sound.

“We were really fortunate to have a lot of the equipment we didn’t already have on hand donated by parents and people from the community,” Burke said. “We now have two high-quality projectors to show the movie on both sides of the auditorium and amazing surround sound speakers. It’s as close to being in a theater as you can get.”

Last Thursday’s Movie Night program was a matinee, and that meant attendance was down from some of the earlier events because many of the parents and other guests were not able to attend.

“When we have these at night, the whole front of the auditorium is like open seating at a concert,” Burke said. “People bring their lawn chairs, bean bag chairs and even blankets to watch the movie. It’s a real event.”

Payne and Burke choose new releases for programs, like “Dolphin Tale” in January and last week’s “Abduction.” The movie selected for the March 15 matinee program is “Real Steel.” There will be an evening movie April 13 and an afternoon double feature May 4 to close out the school year.

Admission to the movies is free, but concessions are available – and that’s what helps raise the funds for the library’s e-books project. Everything from the traditional popcorn and soda to pizza, nachos, candy bars and cotton candy are sold for each performance.

“It’s really as much about having fun and enjoying a good movie as it is about raising money,” Payne said. “But it’s really great that we’re able to do both at the same time.”