Upload, Share, & Discard DVD’s!

As a full-time working mother I often bare the guilt of not being the volunteering, cupcake-baking, carpooling mother of my great kids.  So recently I jumped at the chance to help out a committee of moms create an end of year 8th grade video.  After all, I know how to create a great movie using iMovie.  I enthusiastically showed up with my iPad and all of my knowledge as a tech trainer ready to get to work with ideas and digital content.  As soon as we got started however,  I knew I had to treat lightly while offering my services when the committee chairperson couldn’t get the DVD player to work and was taking notes on a yellow pad of paper. 

After watching some of last year’s video I basically got the gist of what they wanted for a movie and so we began the official planning.  The discussion started with the idea of charging $5.00 for each DVD, just like the previous years. 

I suggested uploading the movie to YouTube so that the kids could watch the movie whenever and wherever they wanted.  Let’s just say that if there were crickets in the room we would have heard them.  I realized I had to tread lightly and be gentle.  I also felt like an alien in the room, but I’ve experienced that feeling before so I just kept going. 

As the meeting proceeded it was agreed that I would put the movie together.  Next came the paper envelope, (again from last year) that would require every parent to submit a photo of their child to be used in the movie.  And again, very gently here, I suggested creating an account somewhere online where people could submit their photos digitally so that I could just grab those photos.  This way we could just skip the whole scanning process.  cricket-cricket noise> process> reaction.  This reaction was a lot more positive than the YouTube idea, and I felt like we were getting somewhere. 

So this is what we decided to do, with a little nudging, we would use theeasyview.com for people to upload their photos to one folder and a new YouTube channel for people to upload their videos.  I choose theeasyview.com because it allowed me to drag the photos right on to my desktop without a charge.  Snapfish and Flicker would have charged me .25 a photo.  Once the videos are downloaded into my iMovie I could easily delete them. 

I created a how-to sheet on a Google doc and shared it with the committee chairperson.  I might have to walk her through a few steps on sharing the how-to sheet, but I know it will be worth the time in the end. 

Why is it though that some of us are just stuck on how things were done in the past?  Isn’t this one problem in our classrooms?  Do things the way it has always been done?  The only ones who want a DVD are the parents who don’t ever go to YouTube!  Their own kids are on YouTube every day.  Hand them a DVD and you will feel like an alien!

My goal as the movie creator is to go paper-free and not make it into a huge time drain!  Of course, I will have fun creating the movie as I always do. Wish me luck.  I will have to be gentle!