For this combined blog post, I decided to use iMovie. This is the post that stressed me out the most. I have a dinosaur of a laptop and wasn’t quite sure how I would go about this video tutorial. Then while looking through the suggested apps I saw iMovie, the app that is automatically added with one of our kazillion updates with iPhone, but I never really knew that I would need to use it until now!

I am sure there were many features of this app that I did not use but I found it to be very simple, straight forward and easy to use.

While doing lots and lots of recon on how to make a tutorial video I came across this video and this article, on how to make screencast videos. In both of these. not all the information was relevant because our purposes are not for business but the biggest tip took away from these most was to make a script. Before looking into the idea of this video I honestly thought people just talked over a recording while making it, without much forethought. I was very glad for a script and with more editing practice it would sound more flawless. But for the sake of this assignment, it was easy and simple enough.

The steps I took to get to the final product:

• Think about what message I wanted to get across to my audience then write out a script outline
• Screen record (on my iPad) enough video to be able to convey my message and allow time for editing
  
• Write the full script on a word document on the computer so it will be easier to see, no paper crinkling in the audio and easier to edit during practice runs
• Play with editing features like splitting frames & transition screens
•        
• Practice dialogue and make edits where necessary in script and on the video
• Once the dialogue seemed to fit in well with the video, It was time to record and this was very simple to do

Editing the sound by splitting it was a bit more tricky and there is a spot where it doesn’t flow as smooth because of this but once again, with more editing practice this will become easier to do and for the sake of this video it worked well enough for me.

 

 

 

 

• Another fun thing I found completely by accident was a theme soundtrack option shown below in green. It helped to make the dead space in the video less noticable, i thought, and just added an extra element to it. You can adjust the volume so it does not take over the entire video as well, which I found to be helpful.

This was simple and easy to use but it was not a quick or fast process by any means. This took quite a lot of time to get just right and for that amount of effort for a less than 2 and a half minutes video is crazy to me. I now have a lot of new found respect for people who make videos like this for a living or hobby! I do believe that the process would go much faster with practice. I did not hate this assignment for the amount of time that I dreaded it.

I hope you try to use this app in the future. I feel as a teacher in the classroom it would be a really great tool to explain certain things like how to use apps on tablets or maybe even to explain certain centers for activities like center time when you do not have an EA in the classroom, you could kind of become your own EA and would help take up less class time explaining things over and over because we all know there will be the students who say “What do I do?!” right after explaining for the 4th time that period what is expected.

How else do you think we could we use something like this in the classroom? And what were your thoughts on the theme soundtrack!?

The Final Product: