Thoughts about adding videos to blogs and wikis

I have been thinking recently of the different ways of putting video on to a blog or wiki; and when a friend asked me for some ideas on how to do this I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to summarise what I have tried up to now and what I plan to try in the future! So here goes...

SHORT VIDEOS
This is something I learned very recently through another friend – isn’t it amazing how we learn from one another all the time! In Blogger and Edublogs you can easily add video if it is not too big in size. The problem comes in how your video camera saves files. The files (I think) need to be .wmv to be uploaded. This is where YouTube Downloader comes in handy. This is a free downloadable programme that can convert movies to different formats. You need to select the second option 'Convert video (previously downloaded) from file'. It works with any video. However Edublogs and Blogger show these videos differently as I will show you now.

Last year the Grade 3s used Photostory 3 (with narration) to make videos about Fish Hoek. This is how Edublogs shows the video:
Fish Hoek

(Edublogs says about their video approach, "It doesn’t embed your file in an actual video or audio player in your post; it only inserts a link to the file. When readers click on the link it opens another page where the audio file is played or it downloads the video onto their computer").

This is how Blogger shows the same video. It actually embeds the video.
http://grade4fishhoekprimary.blogspot.com/2011/05/learning-about-fish-hoek.html

I have to say that I really prefer the Blogger approach with ordinary video clips. Unfortunately Wikispaces only allows embedded video which is what I will discuss next.

SHORT EMBEDDED VIDEOS USING ONE TRUE MEDIA
The one I have tried to date is One True Media. A teacher from the USA visited us and the class spontaneously broke into song so I captured it on my camera and put it into OneTrueMedia

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We linked with Miss Ale in Argentina for a collaborative-writing project and she made this video using OneTrueMedia:

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Another teacher I linked with in Canada, Mr Millward, did his class graduation using OneTrueMedia. As you can see the programme is very creative.
http://millwardb.edublogs.org/2010/06/23/graduation/

SHORT VIDEOS USING ANIMOTO
With Animoto you are only allowed short videos of 30 seconds free but there is an Animoto Educators account which I have applied for and received. This entitles me to myself and 50 of my students having the Plus account in which we can upload full length videos (maximum 200MB).

Last year one of the Grade 5 classes participated in the ‘Monster project’ and many of the teachers around the world used Animoto to show everyone where they were at. Here is a sample from a Grade 2 class (Miss Hariju) in the USA:


SCHOOL TUBE
I must say that I love School Tube and it is my first choice since it is all about school! I learned about it from another of my PLN friends from America, Bob Greenwood, with whom I was involved in a project. He teaches Grade 2 and he has his own channel on School Tube. He makes so many videos. Take a look:
http://www1.schooltube.com/Organization/OrganizationHome.aspx?oid=129695

So that is what I have done. I have applied recently to become a moderator on School Tube and I have my own school channel. I plan to upload everything there. It gives me an embedding code and I put the code in my blogs and in my wikis. Our latest Adobe Youth Voices project has been uploaded there only today after the group inserted royalty free music clips to give the movie more feeling.
http://got.im/0JTE

I am running two 'creative writing and video-making' computer clubs at school, so I think I will be using this site a lot.

YOU TUBE
I also like using YouTube and I have a channel there as well for all my school videos. Once you have posted a video it gives you a code which you can embed into any blog or wiki. This makes it very easy. Often with school videos I make them private so that they can only be seen by whoever has the YouTube address link. We are on a video swap project with Denmark (Grade 6) and we use YouTube for this. I sometimes think that parents will be happier with the use of School Tube because it is mainly for teachers.

FOR THE FUTURE
I would like to try out video sites recommended in blogposts:
a) Vimeo
b) Explore more with Animoto http://edupln.ning.com/profiles/blogs/animoto-in-the-classroom
c) Other recommended sites (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/03/30/not-the-best-but-a-list-of-online-video-editors/)

My BIG question at the moment is - how do you compress large .avi files of say 1.8GB in order to upload them easily? (Later...okay, I have just found the answer to this. You put the whole .avi file into Windows Movie Maker and it reduces it amazingly with little loss of quality. It really works...yay!)