Ding Ding! Tool # 3 round 2

Ok, so I was so excited to use the applications in Tool 3 to share my awesome summer experiences with my students and fellow teachers. That excitement soon turned into annoyance yesterday. I am a bit of a perfectionist, shocker I know, so I became frustrated when I was trying to use an image generator to share pictures and video clips from my recent shark dive in the Bahamas. Thankfully yesterday is behind me and I'm giving it another shot today.
I am currently 'patiently' awaiting the email from Animoto announcing that my short film is ready to be viewed. I'm sure most people don't spend 2 hours creating a 30 second video, but I did! Allow me to explain my production woes! I do want to give a disclaimer that my lengthy video production debacle was by no means Animoto's fault. They outline a very SIMPLE three step process.
Step one: upload pictures. No problem. I carefully chose the best 12 pictures from our dive to include in my video. The pictures very quickly popped up on Animoto's website.
Step two: choose music. Here is where the wild goose chase began. You have two options; use their music or upload your own. The catch is that the upload has to be an MP3. Well, I have an iPod. Which I thought played MP3's. All of those songs are on my ITunes library, no problem, right? I get this idea in my head that I can't get out. I HAVE to have the Jaws theme song for my Shark Dive video. So I open up ITunes, go to the store, redeem my husband's (sorry Cameron) gift certificate and proceed to purchase JAWS! Then I go back to Animoto and browse for my song. This is where I finally figure out that the songs in ITunes ARE NOT MP3's. So, I use ITunes help to learn how to convert MPEGS to MP3's. I follow those instructions, thinking I have converted my JAWS song. I go back to Animoto and attempt once again to upload JAWS. Well, you guessed it. My song is still not an MP3. I venture back to ITunes and read the fine print on the instruction page for converting to MP3's only to learn that songs downloaded from the ITunes Store cannot be converted into MP3's. Great. Most people would wave their white flag and give in to using Animoto's song choices. But not me! I proceed to surf the web in search of an MP3 version of JAWS. My search first leads me to a free download of my JAWS song, but it is in the format of a ringtone. Not helpful. I am then lead to a free download of a video/DVD/music/etc converting software. Surely I don't download that, right? Oh no, I do. As the files are being poured into my computer's hard drive I am feeling increasing regret. I promise myself that I will only use the software once. JUST to convert my JAWS song. How much damage can really be done? Then I will uninstall all the files related to the conversion culprit. Bottom line, I panic and uninstall before I even try to convert JAWS. There goes another 30 minutes. Meanwhile, I call my husband to, let's be honest, complain. He is busy at work, and I know that, but in an every-present attempt to keep his wife (that's me) happy, he magically makes an MP3 version of JAWS appear in my inbox. My hero! I scurry back to the Animoto website, and upload my precious song!
I'm ready for the next step. The final step, create! And that brings us to the beginning of today's post. I just checked and the video exists! It is awesome! Now I'm off to stick it on my blog. Wish me luck!