I admit I was nervous about creating this video. I won’t even mention how many times I had to start over for a variety of reasons! My original plan was to do a screen share of a children’s e-book. I would be seen reading from an inset in the corner. I tried to this with both Zoom and Loom. With Loom specifically, there wasn’t a countdown and since I wasn’t able to see the control bar, I struggled knowing if I had actually started recoding. When I wanted to stop it took a few seconds, where the viewer saw me fumbling, to figure out how to end my recording. Previously I have tried Flipgrid and Screencastify, both have a countdown so you know when to begin talking. I hadn’t even realized how helpful this was. When I tried Zoom, there was also too much navigating and the video simply wasn’t smooth. It could simply be that the e-book and video combination was not a good idea, rather than the tools being challenging . I finally took a QuickTime video on my Mac, uploaded it to Animoto, and added a few edits from their site.

I think these video tools could be very beneficial in school libraries specifically during the pandemic. Video gives librarians another way to connect with students during distance learning. It could be reading a book aloud, working with classroom teachers to connect what students are currently studying with how they can gather information using the school library’s online resources, or even doing a simple craft like making a bookmark. This whole process was challenging and my video is far from perfect! I learned a lot, but have a long way to go to perfect my video making skills.