As my school's budget has been cut (and we're already the lowest paid teachers in the nation), I am trying to squeeze value out of every dollar. I'm an elementary counselor in a large (600+), low-income school with lots of diversity and transient families. With more of my time focused on dealing with behavior and crisis situations, prevention has minimized with the group of kids who need it most! To try to provide more education/prevention services, I'd like to create vodcasts or video-based lessons my staff can show on their classroom Smartboards. I need these little lessons to be highly visual since my of my students are refuges and know little English. Since I am on "professional growth plan" for the evaluation cycle next year, this will be my project. I have absolutely no supply budget so everything I need to purchase will come out of my pocket. So with that in mind, what video-editing software do you recommend I purchase? I will likely be using my own Canon Power-shot for the actual video though I should be able to borrow a flip-camera from the library. I purchased a cheap microphone that should work too. Most of my Vodcasts will be between 2-5 minutes but I would also like to create some longer ones too.
I will use Powerpoint slides for a lot of my media so I have Jing to be able to get screen captures of the slides to add to my narration. That process seems a bit messy but those program are on my computer. I also have Windows Movie Maker but don't like that I cannot have narration AND another audio like music. Movie Maker is just not really what I am looking for.
I have a Windows 7 desktop and a Vista laptop at home. Our district does not allow us to install software on our school computers so I'll likely be doing my work from home or on my laptop.
If you have any suggestions or know of any resources I can check-out for this I would greatly appreciate your help!
