Hearts of Resistance by Soraya M. Lane

Book trailers are going to be so much fun to create with my students.  I can think of several right now who would be totally into this and create outstanding book trailers.  I will have to suggest this to the English department head as an alternative to a book report. The technology aspect of creating a multimedia book trailer was a bit daunting… scary even…but I can do it…I am an intelligent woman…right???!Creating a multimedia presentation  has been one of the most frustrating endeavors to date.  I felt so overwhelmed and nervous that I would be not be able to finish on time, as this was a huge learning curve for me.

Sigh.  I first attempted to use Adobe Spark.  It crashed 4 separate times…yup, I was determined to make it work…my computer said otherwise.

So, PowerPoint it was.  I challenged myself to learn how to use Powerpoint more than putting pictures onto a slide.

After surfing the internet for my images…I then put them onto slides…easy peasy…hahahahahahaha.

Even the audio part was cool…although I could not figure out how to get the audio to continuously play for more than one slide???

So…am happy with my work…now on to the real fun stuff!!! (Insert total sarcasm here) My computer wouldn’t allow me to convert the presentation into a movie? (yes, I should have YouTubed it?) This was a frustrating several hour challenge…computer 2 me 1…

I then randomly asked a store cashier if she knew how to make a presentation into a movie…she said…cue singing angels here…SCREENCASTIFY What??? Hello, McFly…I had heard of this tool, but had never used it…AMAZING!!!

When I was able to download the app…it recorded me watching the screen??? How do I get that out of there??? Can I edit it??  No, I would have to pay to upgrade???  Then I finally figured out that I could cover my camera…that worked, phew!

The joke is still on me… it took forever to upload??? What?? I had never uploaded a video before and had no idea it was going to take all night??? and then the recording still was not working correctly…I could hear background noises like me breathing??  LOL ok, maybe not that so much…but it was still not right???

OK, so  over the next several hours…I believe I used 20 of the free 50 uploads on Screencastify??? Honestly, I just wanted to go to bed…sleep, must sleep…brain  no longer working…can’t take it…. however, I finally finished and in the morning…I will have to start on another project…

All in all, I am quite grateful that I had to accomplish this task.  I feel that I can empathize with my students and fellow teachers when things go horribly awry, but at the same time…how proud and excited when it all comes together into something wonderful.