This task forced me to learn quite a few new skills, which was frustrating and good at the same time. Up until this assignment, I had never created a tutorial with voice-over, never "recorded" a slideshow with set timing, never captured video from a screen, never used Jing to capture and annotate a screenshot, never layered so many multimedia components in a slideshow, and never published a slideshow to the web. I'd also never used RSS, so there was a lot of learning at my house this week!
So that I can remember what I ended up doing (and hopefully not repeat the mistakes of my past!), here's a run-down of the specific technologies that I used:
-The overall presentation was created in Keynote, and I inserted the multimedia.
-Screen shots were created using Jing to capture and add little red arrows (totally unnecessary, but I wanted to try out this program).
-Video screen-casts were captured using Quicktime, then also inserted into Keynote.
-Once the presentation was together in Keynote, I used the "record presentation" feature of this program to record a voice-over/narration. This, I think, was a mistake. I got super-annoyed with the fact that I couldn't hear the narration from, say, 3 minutes on. Every time I wanted to check how something sounded and how it matched up with the slideshow, I had to watch the entire presentation from the beginning. Maybe I missed something, but there is seemingly no way to fast-forward/skip a "recorded" presentation or the audio that goes with it. I searched all sorts of help sections and could NOT figure it out. So by the time I was done recording narration, I was VERY tired of my own presentation.
-Once the timing and narration came together (yesterday) and I told myself "it's good enough!", I tried repeatedly to "share" the Keynote presentation to YouTube. It's in the menu bar as an option and should have worked. However, after 45 minutes or so each time, I would get an error message saying "Upload failed because of an unrecognized error". I tried this 4 times, searched YouTube help pages, got even more frustrated, tried a few minor changes (like reducing the file size), then decided to employ Quicktime.
-I tried exporting my Keynote file to Quicktime, and that also failed. The timing of the slides and the narration were inexplicably shifted every time. By a LOT. Argh.
-I tried converting my Keynote file to any one of the accepted movie file formats for YouTube, but again... failure.
-Sooooo... I did what any desperate grad student probably would do and decided to lower my standards again. Using Quicktime to capture video of my screen, I let my Keynote presentation play all the way through. I had to plug headphones into my computer so that the audio didn't have an echo, and I had to plead with the other 4 mammals in my teeny house to PLEASE BE QUIET FOR THE NEXT TEN MINUTES! It helped that it was nap-time. Anyway, Quicktime did capture the video, and obviously the timing wasn't affected with this method. I trimmed the beginning and end of the resulting file so that you wouldn't see the setting up of the screencast, and was able to upload this to YouTube. FINALLY!
Despite the tough times, I'm glad that I was required to push my comfort zone (yet again) for this assignment. I can definitely see the applications of RSS as well as the ability to create a tutorial. I hope that it won't take me so darn long next time! I suspect that it won't, since I shouldn't have to read all the same help sections. (Right?)
The end product, my tutorial, strikes me as a bit cheesy, and I am soooo tired of hearing my own recorded voice! (I swear I don't sound like that normally!) I also hate that I had to take that final step of "re-recording" my final Keynote presentation in Quicktime, because the audio lost a lot of quality. Oh, well. You can only hear my daughter yelling ONCE in the background, and the neighbor dogs as well as my dogs only forced me to re-record a COUPLE sections. I never knew I'd want a sound-proofed room for this master's degree! Does anyone have suggestions on a microphone that might pick up less background noise? I'm currently using my iMac's internal mic, and I think those days might be numbered.
I may end up sharing this tutorial (or at least my new knowledge) with some of my colleagues. I'm certain that RSS is not being used much in my school, and I think other teachers would like to know about this efficient way of staying current. My husband is a teacher and didn't know about RSS, so I had him watch my tutorial last night (I know, exciting Saturday night!) and now he has his feedly all set up and it's streaming him info. Hooray! :-)
If anyone who reads this has recommendations on how I could have made this project come together easier/better, PLEASE tell me! I welcome any and all feedback, criticism, and help. Thanks!
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