Three Tools for Quickly & Easily Creating End-of-Year Slideshow Videos

In my weekly newsletter I mentioned that a sure sign that the end of the school year is near always lands in my inbox as an uptick in the number of questions I get about saving and moving files. Another sign that the end of the school year is near is an increase in questions like this one that just landed in my inbox, 

I have taken a lot of pictures this year. I would like to put them into a slideshow with music for my students for the last day of school. What program do you recommend? Thank you.

If you're also thinking about making an end-of-year slideshow video for your students, here are a few tools that I recommend. 

Adobe Creative Cloud Express Video
Adobe Creative Cloud Express was previously known as Adobe Spark. I've been using it since its launch half a dozen years ago. Adobe Creative Cloud Express makes it easy for students to create succinct audio slideshow videos. It includes a library of background music that you can insert into your videos. Finally, Adobe Creative Cloud Express is a collaborative tool so you can invite a colleague to work on developing an end-of-year slideshow video with you. Watch this video to learn how to make a video with Adobe Creative Cloud Express.

Canva
Canva offers two ways to create audio slideshow videos. The first way is to simply put together a series of slides and then select a soundtrack to play in the background. That process is demonstrated here. The other method is to use Canva's full video editor to add narration and custom timings to an audio slideshow video. That process is demonstrated in this video.

Microsoft Photos
Microsoft Photos includes a video creation tool for making short audio slideshow-style videos. You'll find this by just opening the native photos app in Windows 10. Within the editor there are tools for adding animated effects to still images, insert your existing video clips into a video project, and tools for adding audio to your video. There's also a great option to search for Creative Commons licensed images and insert them directly into your video project. The best part of that feature is that attribution information is automatically added onto the images you choose through the built-in search tool. In the following video I provide a demonstration of how to create a video in Microsoft Photos in Windows 10.

How to Create Your Own Virtual Reality Tours

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about and gave a video demonstration of how to lead students on virtual reality tours with Expeditions Pro. In that video I mentioned that Expeditions Pro can also be used to create your own virtual reality tours. This morning I recorded a video about how do that. Watch my new video to learn how you can create your own virtual reality tours with Expeditions Pro. 


There are a few things to note from this video before you try creating your own virtual reality tours with Expeditions Pro. 

• First, in the demo I used 360 degree imagery that I captured with my Android phone (Pixel 5) and saved in Google Photos. 
• Second, I downloaded my 360 imagery from my Google Photos account then imported it into my tour. 
• Third, I used Vocaroo.com to record the audio narration for the each view in my tour. I downloaded my audio from Vocaroo as an MP3 file then imported it into my tour on Expeditions Pro.

To learn how to use Expeditions Pro to guide students on VR tours, watch this video. The directions in the video can be followed for VR tours you create or those that you find in the galleries in the Expeditions Pro app.