The Edublogger

Let’s be honest video’s are cool. Fun to create and enjoyable to watch. Unfortunately video sharing websites such as Google Video and YouTube are often blocked by schools which causes problems if you want to embed videos from these sites into blog posts.

The good news is you don’t have to upload your and/or your student videos to video sharing websites and then embed the videos from these sites into blog posts; instead you can upload and embed them directly into your blog posts.

Benefits of Videos

Videos offer so many benefits for learning:

• Great for illustration purposes; can be supported by text and interactions
• A 20 second video can easily replace a full page of text, especially when trying to explain a detailed process or activity (i.e. “How To”)
• Fantastic for recording excursions e.g. video the excursion and edit into a movie of less than 5 minutes. Get students to view the video and reflect on what happened during the day, what were the high points etc
• To show others what the students are doing so that the community can feel part of the learning environment
• Highlight, freeze-frame or slow-motion an event can be of incredible benefit e.g. playing a musical instrument
• Pictures in a textbook seem quite boring compared to real scenario shown in videos
• Subtitles, on-screen labels or voice-overs are of immense benefit to the language deprived learner and second-language students
• Videos stored on-line allow students to review at their own pace on demand

Creating Videos

Free desktop applications for creating/editing videos include:

1. PhotoStory 3

PhotoStory 3 is downloaded free from Microsoft (if you use Windows Operating System). However you will need to also have at least Windows Media Player 10 on your computer (you can download Media Player 10 here!). It’s really easy to use; allowing you to create videos from photos and images.

For information on how to use PhotoStory 3 check out David Jake’s:

• Using Microsoft Photostory 3 Manual (which you can download and print)
• PhotoStory 3 Video Tutorials

2. Windows Movie Maker 2
Movie Maker 2 is free software that comes with Windows Service Pack 2; so if you have Windows you should have it installed already on your computer (you can download it from here). It’s fairly easy to use and movies can be created from importing videos, pictures, audio and music. Here’s my instructions on how to use MovieMaker 2.

3. iMovie

iMovie is free software that comes with Macs. It’s fairly easy to use and movies can be created from importing videos, pictures, audio and music. Here are video tutorials for using iMovie.

Uploading Videos Directly To Your Blog

Edublogs allows you to upload videos, up to 20 MB in size , directly to your blog. Supported video formats include mov, mp4, 3gp, wmv and avi. Ideally it’s best to keep your videos short (i.e. less than 10 minutes) to ensure they load quickly when your readers view them.

1. On your blog dashboard, go to Write > Post
2. Click Add Video button and navigate to the area of your computer that has the video file you wish to upload
3. Select the video you want to upload and click open. Be patient –will take time to upload depending on size i.e. several minutes
4. Once uploaded click on Insert into Post.
5. Your video will appear as a link in your post.  Your readers just need to click on the link and your video will start playing — there will be some delay while your video is buffered.

Below is an example of a video I’ve uploaded directly to this blog.

podcastingtips_0001.wmv

Uploading m4a Video Formats

Read Ken Pendergrass’s Getting your Garageband podcasts to work with Edublogs and other video hosting sites post for excellent explanation and instructions of how to upload m4a files to Edublogs. Here is a video tutorial on how to use Garageband to create podcasts.

Thanks Ken for sharing your great tips with us.

FINAL THOUGHTS

We hope you enjoy creating/editing your own movies. Let us know how you go uploading to your blog. We would also like to hear your tips for creating movies.

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