This is a little odd, to be truthful. I’m reflecting on creating my social media creation before I’ve actually posted it! There is a reason, however, and it’s part of what I’m going to reflect on.

I created a video presentation that highlighted many of the photos and videos that I took on a recent trip to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Cairo, Egypt. The way I decided to do that was via a screencast from my desktop.

Technical
The photos were stored in iPhoto, but for easy and quick access to just the right ones I exported them to my desktop (that’s a fancy way of saying I dragged them to my desktop) and then simply opened them in a simple, light-weight image viewer, Preview. The videos (short, low-quality video from my digital camera) were also in iPhoto, and I dragged selected ones to the desktop as well for simple, sequential access.

As I used Preview to show the pictures, and QuickTime to show the movies, I captured the onscreen action with Snapz Pro X, a popular screencapturing tool for Mac OS X. Snapz Pro also captures audio from both the computer and me, so it’s an all-in-one solution.

I also accessed Google Maps in satellite mode to show where Amsterdam and Egypt are.

Story-telling
I wanted to craft something that gave viewers (and potential students) not just an impression of the trip, but also some historical and cultural takeaways. Plus, I wanted to plant seeds for further exploration.

I chose a narrative format, mostly sequential, to give a sense of motion and pace, and also to approximate the flow of a trip: leaving, traveling, arriving, seeing, doing, experiencing, and returning.

Why these tools
These tools made sense because I could bring different media in …

In the case of Google Maps, I could help viewers orient spatially … and when coupled with screencasting, i could do it in a way that did not interrupt the flow of the narrative, but actually enhanced it (IMHO).

That’s the key value that screencasting brought: the ability to stream any images, video, and audio that I could display and create at my computer. Plus, it allowed me to stream that in one simple video file.

I was tempted to do a minisite format: a small website with multiple pages and posts. This is a great way to allow learners/viewers/visitors/learners to experience the content at their own pace, according to their own interests, and to the depth that they wish.

However, rather than a destination for learners to explore, I wanted a springboard to launch … to launch inquiry, investigation, verification, and so forth.

The screencasting format also allowed me to accompany the video easily with an relaxed, comfortable, unscripted audio track in which I could just be natural, normal, and unstilted … and offer up as much of the flavor of my trip and the things that I learned as possible.

Students
Giving students access to tools like these allows for very simple creation of surprising good media, in fairly short order. However, movies created with these tools can also be imported into more sophisticated applications to create more heavily produced movies with titles, subtitles, a music track … the possibilities are endless.

Note, however, that doing this requires significantly more time.

The problem
The main problem I had was that Snapz Pro creates movie files with multiple audio tracks … and online video hosting services such as YouTube and Vimeo can only read one audio track when they convert videos into their own formats for viewing online.

So, when I first uploaded the video, it had no sound. I had to save and export the video in a number of different ways to try to find a way to upload it in a format that would preserve the essential audio track.

As I write this, I’ve tried a different export, have re-uploaded the video, and am now waiting for Vimeo to convert it to see if I’ve been successful – this third time!

Integrating story-telling into education
I’ve published a separate post on integrating story-telling into school, which includes some pedagogical rational for this educational practice, and some ideas on what can make this an effective technique.