“What fresh hell can this be?” ~ Dorothy Parker

This assignment was a bit challenging at the start. I had first to learn what “video blog”meant. I had in mind the short videos that Beyonce made with a camcorder each night while on tour, which I think is called a “vlog.” I was glad to learn that the “video blog” has a few different forms because I just do not like being on video; I’m not such of a fan of photos, either. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know! :)

I dawdled for a long time trying to decide which web-based apps to use. There are so many & I am just familiar enough with enough of them to make the choice tricky. I finally decided to use Prezi for presentation, and Vocaroo to record the audio.

Prezi has a rather steep learning curve. But, if you spend an afternoon watching Prezi's Official Tutorials on Youtube, you’ll find that it’s not as hard to use as you might first think. There are only two things that I’ve found to be a bit irritating about it. There just aren’t enough templates to choose from. I typically just start from scratch, but I was lucky to find one that met the design needs of this project. It’s also a bit of a bother that you have to record an .mp3 for each “zoom.” But, adding them is really quite easy.

I used Vocaroo to record audio files. It’s straightforward & easy to use. It provides an unvarnished recording, so if you want to make edits, e.g., cuts, noise reduction, background music, etc.,  you’ll have to use something like Audacity, or GarageBand.

The most time-intensive part of this project was creating a script. Sourcing & creating the Prezi took two - three hours. I finished the .mp3’s in under an hour with Vocaroo.