Okay, so I'm so excited that I just created my first app-smashing project!  I just love saying (and typing "app-smashing")...doesn't it just sound cool?!?!?  The apps that I used are all free and I spent about 10-15 minutes making this short little video about me.  If I did another video with the same apps I do not think it would take even half of the time, but I made some mistakes and had to fix 'em up a bit.  Once we all get used to playing and using these techniques, we will all get so much quicker!

I have already shown the students some of the easier to use, but still fun apps and I made a couple of mistakes in front of them.  But it was okay!  They weren't sure either and we helped each other out and got through it and all learned something!  Don't be intimidated and scared to make a mistake!!

So, back to this app-smashing stuff!  The apps I used were only iMovie, Google Earth, Skitch, Google Chrome (or could use Safari), and my Camera Roll.  I also used Tellegami, but it wasn't playing nicely with iMovie tonight.  I saved my "Gami," but it was completely blank when I opened it through iMovie.

Anywho, this is what I did...first I just used Chrome to get some pictures to represent my background - flickercc is a great website to use for this.  I was actually told at a conference that Google Images should NOT be used for any elementary students EVER!  "You never know what you are going to get," <Forrest Gump>.  So this flickercc site is a good alternative, they are all in HD, and they are not professionally done so you do not have to cite them, although you certainly could anyway.

Once I found some pictures, I saved the pictures by just placing my finger on the picture until a little popup appeared and I selected "Save image."  It automatically goes into your camera roll!!  I did this for several pictures.  I was going to place them directly into iMovie, but I thought to myself, I want to do more app-smashing!!!  So, I opened up Skitch and opened up my newly entered camera roll pictures.  Then I marked on the pictures - - and then...<trumpet> I clicked on my home button and power button at the same time, let go, and the iPad saved the image I had just created on Skitch to my camera roll!  It took a screen shot and directly saved it there for me!  How cool is that!?!?

I opened iMovie, put in the photos in the order I wanted and played it.  Although it looked cool the way iMovie sort of pans the pictures, I thought that it was way too boring.  So I clicked on music and selected just one of the generic themes available for free.  I will play with my own music when I actually have some!  So I played that to hear it and it sounded pretty neat.  But I wanted more, so...as much as I dislike hearing my own voice, I decided to record (was going to type "tape my voice" but decided that would age me a bit) my voice over top of the music.  So I did and then played it back.  It sounded pretty good considering how awful I sound. :)

So I was done in iMovie but wanted to be able to access it in the future in an easily accessible format, so I chose to upload it to YouTube.  I already have my YouTube account set up, so all I had to do was wait about 10 minutes for it to upload.  And here it is!!  Enjoy (and don't make fun of my voice and my mess-ups when talking!)!