Thing 4

I was so excited to be working with You Tube for this activity. I watched the video on how to upload my own videos to the site, then I got to work. I really wanted to use one of the Animoto videos I made, but then I decided to use a piece of music my son wrote for his girlfriend. The problem was that I had no video to go with it. I told him I wanted to put pictures of him and his girlfriend over the music, but he refused. It's funny because he already has videos of himself on You Tube, so I didn't see why he would refuse to put still pictures of himself over the music he wrote. Anyway, I imported his song into Windows Movie Maker and after a bit of trial and error, was able to post a video on You Tube called A Song for Laura. The pictures have nothing to do with the music. My daughter took them on a summer vacation a few years ago. So, both of my children had input into the video I uploaded this evening, one wrote the music, and the other took the photos. It's not a great video, but uploading to You Tube is simple. I mean really simple, like even a child can do it. The real learning experience for me was Windows Movie Maker. I've used other movie programs before and none are as easy to use as this one. I didn't use my school computer for this project for multiple reasons that are too long to bore you with tonight. I hope I have this program on my computer so my kids can use it. I definitely need to teach them how to use a digital camera and how to import pictures and store them in their files on Norway.
The benefits I see from putting kids work on You Tube is that they get to see themselves online and their parents can see it as well. Family and friends can also see what kids upload to sites like this one. That is really reinforcing for kids and highly motivational. It would also be awesome to have some teaching videos for kids who don't understand certain concepts, like subtracting across 0 in math. My daughter used the videos from the online textbook at Spring Forest for her algebra homework on a daily basis. They were so helpful. I would love to see something like that for my students who don't feel confident about a topic or skill.