Frustrations with Technology

So I have decided to do the video for my project. I've been working on a video using One True Media. It is a free online video creator with a premium upgrade to get more features. Since it is relatively inexpensive for the upgrade per month, I decided to pay and then I can cancel afterwards depending upon my usage and how I like it. The project I've been working on is for our annual Peek Across the Creek ceremony. This is our annual "graduation" at PK. It isn't huge like other schools graduations, but it is fun for the kids to ceremoniously cross the Tumblin' Creek with all the sixth graders welcoming them. They then get the opportunity to visit sixth grade classes for a few minutes and sit with Dr. Froman and get their questions about middle school answered. Afterwards, they come back to the elementary side and find that the parents have put together a party for them. The last couple of years, I've put together a slide show for the party.

Last year I just used the "slideshow" option in the pictures folder and ran the music in the background using iTunes. This year I wanted to do something a little more sophisticated. I've used iMovie before, but I wanted something that was less time-consuming as I'm not actually editing a film. Initially, One True Media seemed pretty fool proof. And it wasn't too bad with uploading the media. The nice thing is that once everything was uploaded, all I had to do was pick at theme and the transitions and effects are done automatically. That is the part that takes so long with iMovie. Also on the plus side, moving the pictures around to get them in the right order wasn't too big of a deal. However, it was a pain to go back and edit in places where I didn't like the transition the theme chose for a picture. It was also very frustrating to try and upload the movie. Since I want to be able to show the movie "full-screen" I have to upload it to a service. YouTube seemed easiest, so I began there. I know that YouTube has a 10 minutes limit on its movies, so I made sure I was 7 seconds under that in case there were some buffering issues on each end. When I went to upload, however, it said that YouTube requires it to be no more than 9 min. and 40 sec. So I had to re-edit 5 times to get it down under the required time limit. By the way, in order for it to say I was under 9m/40s, the number on the actual slide show was 9m/30s - go figure. So I had to lose 30 seconds off my slide show - including re-editing the sound. Quite a pain I must say.

So as I continue to think through this process, I think I'd like to try at least one more piece of software. I'm not sure which one yet, but I'll investigate. It could make for an interesting project to do a compare and contrast kind of thing with all the different softwares. Well, not ALL the different softwares, but a few at least. This makes sense to me since I want to use them and see what I think so I can pick on or two to use for our travels.

What is creativity anyway?

So I think that I've decided to go with the idea of learning a new movie maker software of some kind. I'm not sure which one, and I'm pretty sure I might have to purchase one to have a decent one. For now I'm trying out "One True Media," an online product. I'm going to use it to create the slideshow for my students "Peek Across the Creek" party on Tuesday. But the little I've used it, I don't think it is going to push me enough. I also don't know that I'm going to like the "restriction" it imposes (what? Me? Not like a rule?!?!). But I figure this whole process is what the project is supposed to be about, so I'm going to count this as part of my path toward a better, more user friendly movie maker product.

Creativity

So am I taking a course on Creativity and I am tasked with undertaking a creative project. Along with this I have to journal about the process. So here I go...I'm having a hard time choosing what to do at this point. We are given pretty wide-open parameters. In one sense, I think they are too wide. This is something that I think we have to think about when constructing assignments for students as well. In some ways it seems like a cop out to have something completely wide open. What it is really saying is that I, as the teacher, don't want to take the time to really figure out what I'm looking for so I'm going to give you no direction. This seems unfair. On the other hand, it makes sense that you don't want to give too much direction because so many people follow the examples you give if you give any.

At any rate, for my project I have a lot and not much all at the same time. The one topic that I keep coming back around to is trying to find a new movie editing software to try out. Not for actual movies, but to make movies/slideshows out of pictures, videos, and other forms of media from trips and travel. I could also use it at school.

I am also interested in photography, but I don't think I can get that done in time for this class. But that roles right into my thoughts about the movie maker stuff, because the better pictures I have, the better my movies will be. So it sounds like this is where I'm leaning, but I'm not totally sure yet.