Back to School Fun: Make Back-to-school DVD Movie with PowerPoint

Half fun, half fear. That is always what your kids feel in the first week of school. Fun in meeting new friends, and fear of the summer gone-by yet of what's to come. As teachers and parents, you can plan a colorful series of back to school crafts and activities to shatter the fear and encourage your kids. You may throw a funny film shot at night of the first school day, but I assume it would be more interesting and inspiring to guide kids to DIY their own back-to-school DVD movies with PowerPoint. Since kids are curious to new things, a challenging movie creation may dig their inspiration of crafts, brush up their computer skills, drive out initial back-to-school fear, and rebuild confidence in them. So this new school year, teach your children to make an icebreaker back-to-school DVD movie with PowerPoint and make a shiny start.

What You Will Need:

• High-def Digital Photos


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• MS PowerPoint on Your PC


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• Mood Music or Video Clips


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• Quality Blank DVD Disk(s)


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• Moyea PPT to DVD Burner Edu


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• DVD Player or Projector
  

What to Do:

Generally, this back-to-school DVD movie requires 2 processes - One is to mould in PowerPoint, One is to burn to DVD disc.

A. Mould back-to-school PowerPoint slideshow
I recommend MS PowerPoint because it is easy to use for young kids. You don't need to be a genius to use and teach PowerPoint. Now the first step you are to take is to compose the shape of the back-to-school movie with PowerPoint. Have no idea of the "shape"? It indicates what kind of story you want to develop in the back-to-school movie. It can either be an immediate record of awesome activities on the first school day, or an exotic collection of each kid's photo memories of the past summer vacation.
As to the movie story itself, you should associate it with your existing sources: the most basic factor digital photos, the effect accelerator mood music (also background music), or fitting video clips to give more of a touch. Be sure you have enough high-def photos in hand to support a back-to-school movie show (usu. 7-10 photos per minute).

When all the materials for the digital project are ready, it's time to assemble them into PowerPoint. You can use Photo Album in PowerPoint 2003/2007 to add in and edit the photos in order, insert the ready video clip to an expected slide, title the scenes of your movie story, and give a music mood that hits the point.
After edition, it comes to the second process:

B. Burn back-to-school PowerPoint presentation to DVD disc

A slideshow is not enough. Your back-to-school PowerPoint presentation can be playback on a DVD player or projector like a real TV show. All you need is to burn it to accessible DVD with such a cheap but effective app as Moyea PPT to DVD Burner Edu, an e-Learning program that can burn PowerPoint to SCORM compliant DVD and video at on go. Here is a simple guide of burning PowerPoint to DVD disc.

a. Pop in a blank DVD disc to your PC if supportable. Otherwise, you will finally get DVD image files of the back-to-school movie that requires another burning app to burn to disc.
b. Install and launch Moyea PPT to DVD Burner Edu. Then import the back-to-school PowerPoint file.
c. Select the output to DVD (either Standard or High Definition). Personalize your back-to-school DVD movie with your individual logo. Also select a proper DVD theme from the Menu tab.
d. Click Start to burn the back-to-school PowerPoint to DVD (disc).

For illustrative details of burning a PowerPoint presentation to DVD, see in How to Burn PowerPoint to DVD

OK. Your back-to-school DVD movie is ready on a disc. Connect it to a DVD player hooked to a large-screen TV, or to your school computer with a projector. Turn the icebreaker movie on, sit back with your kids, and enjoy the fun school day project!

You may also need these how-tos:

How to Set Background Music in PowerPoint?
How to Insert a Video into a PowerPoint File?

Say Hello to New Classmates with A Self-introduction Video Slideshow

Simple self-introduction video slideshow - A stylish way to show the truest of yourself to your new pals at this back to school season

The new school year comes with the end of this wild summer 2009. Now you are heading back to school, entering into a higher grade, and will meet new faces in class, often say "Hello" to each other in the first class, by a string of self-introductions. It's perfect that you are born an eloquent presenter. But if you happen to be a slow speaker liable to a tongue-tie before public, you need to take efforts preparing your self-introduction in advance. A pretty cool option for you shy students, particularly to you computer geeks, is to employ a compelling video slideshow to outstand yourselves in front of the new class.

What can a smart video slideshow bring?

A well-structured video slideshow can not only wow your audience, but also bring you sheer joy of creation. When you say Hello to your new classmates by a live video show with a laptop, or an iPhone projected to a white wall, they would have a deeper impression of you. If you publish the video slideshow to YouTube or Facebook, later the new pals coming to it would remind you of your special performance on the first day of the new semester.

As to self-improvement, you can get a closer look of yourself from your DIY profile, as well as exercise computer skills at making video slideshow. Because you can't convince the audience unless you know yourself and express yourself properly.

How to make a video slideshow of self-introduction?

It's less than a cinch to create your self-introduction video. Here I would love to suggest two methods, one for PowerPoint users, and one for students without PowerPoint on their PCs.

1. Moyea PPT to Video Converter Edu If you are using MS PowerPoint, you can compose your self-introduction slideshow there. Then use Moyea PPT to Video Converter Edu, an all-inclusive PowerPoint-to-video conversion program, to convert the existing PPT presentation to video, as video makes more sense beyond a desktop, extending your profile to the live Web, a Blackberry, an iPod, an iPhone, and more. As to the content, you can include your name, age, address, likes, dislikes, hobbies, strength, etc., illustrated by animations, graphics, flash, movie clips, and backed up with a lengthy piece of light music or your very voice narration. If necessary, get some beautiful back-to-school PowerPoint backgrounds at Free Back to School PowerPoint Backgrounds

For free PowerPoint templates, click here

Done your self-introduction in PowerPoint, now you can assign the conversion task to Moyea PPT to Video Converter Edu. All in 3 simple steps:
a) Install the e-Learning app, launch it, and import the presentation of your self-introduction.
b) Select an output video format, most popular as AVI, MP4 and WMV. Customize the video profile options as you specialize.
c) Click "Start" to convert to video.

Once the video slideshow comes out, hook it to from your local drive to an iPod or Blackberry, upload it to a video hosting site like YouTube, publish at popular Facebook, embed to your personal blog, and invite your new pals to visit. Alternatively, save it to a CD or USB flash drive, and take to school for a live delivery to those fresh faces.

2. Windows Movie Maker
Not a PowerPoint user? You can still make a self-introduction video since there is a helpful friend - free Windows Movie Maker. Import and assemble the sources (usu. video clips of your typical moments, pictures of your favorite sports, stars, food…) of your self-introduction into Windows Movie Maker. Edit all the elements into a story video with a beginning, middle and end. Use titles, transitions, sounds to make the "TV-style" video enjoyable.

When your self-introduction video slideshow is ready, you can do as described in the first method to share with your new classmates. Enjoy video inspiration, enjoy new school year!

Web 2.0 with Your Class: 7 Amazing Back-to-school Presentation Tools

For a classroom lesson, especially a class that will matter, today's school staff would prefer a dynamic slideshow (remaining original in PowerPoint or reformed in SCORM-compliant video, DVD, Flash) to a chalk-and-blackboard interpretation. There is no doubt that current education is jumping on the train of Web 2.0, typically represented by the integration of digital technology into classroom and the emergence of social networking sites like Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This post covers 7 amazing picks of presentation software or solutions for eager teachers and students who want more broadcasting of a back-to-school masterpiece.

Your First-choice Back-to-school Presentation Tools & Applications

1. MS PowerPoint: The most prevalent presentation-authoring tool developed by Microsoft, great for educators and students to vivify a plain lecture text with lively animations, graphics, music, or even movie clips.

2. Moyea PPT to DVD Burner Edu: An e-Learning program to burn PowerPoint courseware to DVD and convert it to video for cross-platform access on a TV with DVD player and a different computer. From home to school, from desktop to the Web, the presentation tool enables teachers and students to manage their course content on a protective DVD disc and in web-ready video, without bothering to any PowerPoint corruption on a destination device.
Hot Features: Batch process of 12 PowerPoint files. Relieve users from distribution defect of a big PowerPoint file. Retain everything original from PowerPoint to the output DVD. No loss of animations, wipes, sounds or video clips. Watermark to personalize a DVD/video slideshow.

3. Moyea PPT to Video Converter Edu: Green video course creator that makes SCORM compliant video from an e-Learning PowerPoint presentation. Moyea PPT to Video Converter Edu let users expand a course presentation beyond a desktop, but to a video-compliant portable like iPod and iPhone, to a video-hosting site like YouTube and TeacherTube. Great for remote online learning.
Hot Features: Batch conversion of 12 PPT files. Keep complete of a PowerPoint presentation including animations, transitions, music and movie clips to a quality video. Create 12+ video formats from PowerPoint, e.g. ASF, AVI, MOV, FLV, MP4, VOB…

4. Zoho Show: An ONLINE presentation tool that allows you to create a new presentation from scratch using its pre-built themes, as well as to import an existing presentation from both MS PowerPoint (PPT, PPS)and OpenOffice (ODP, SXI). Users can edit, publish, and show their presentations online and export as PPT, PPS, HTML, ODP and PDF.
Hot Features: Free for individual users. Create a presentation full of text, images, shapes, lists, and pre-built content templates
Drawbacks: Limit to PowerPoint file size - no more than 10 MB. Miss on original effects from an existing presentation.

5. SlideShare: The largest website of slideshows, similar to YouTube in the video field. Support presentations of all types: MS PowerPoint, OpenOffice and Apple Keynote. Good for students and educators who want to archive presentations online for sharing and receiving feedbacks.
Hot Features: Free. Bulk upload of presentations. 100MB capacity. Invite friends and colleagues to visit your slideshow via email.
Drawbacks: Miss on all dynamic elements in PowerPoint, like sounds and effects.

6. Empressr: An Ajax and Flash-based service to make and share presentations online. Allows you to save each slide as single image and to make an imported presentation editable.
Hot Feature: Uses Flash and Ajax rather than HTML and Ajax to add more media than other tools including audio and video.
Drawback: Complete loss of original effects in a input presentation.

7. ThinkFree Show: A Java-based presentation application similar to Microsoft PowerPoint. ThinkFree Show offers an ease to create rich presentations and play them through the online editor or by graphic. You can also save your presentations for viewing in Microsoft PowerPoint and share them with others online.
Hot Feature: Can convert PPT to PDF, text and image.
Drawback: Cannot convert properly of a PPT file more than 5MB.

Cheap and fast-to-create, these e-Learning presentation tools have been encouraging staff and faculty nowadays to take more advantage of Web 2.0 technology. Just boost your new school year with a proper tech tool of the above!