Who out there does an end of year slideshow for their students or class? I have been doing it for 4 years now and just simply love it....the kids love it....the parents love it....and it's such a nice way to capture and keepsake your child's memories and your student and teaching memories each year!
I use Windows Movie Maker to make my DVD EOY slideshows. It's so super easy that even if you aren't very computer savvy, you can still figure it out! I upgraded a few month ago to Windows 8 and I did find though, that movie maker does not come installed on Windows 8. I panicked at first when I started to make my movie yesterday!!! What!! No Movie Maker!! HELP GOOGLE! And google calmed me down right away....You have to install it yourself on Windows 8. Really? But it was no hassle! Google came through again and found this how to video....and then I downloaded movie maker from their link. Piece of cake!
Inserting pictures...also piece of cake! Now for the music. All of the music I had stored from previous years was gone due to a computer crash. So I knew this was going to be time consuming. Starting from scratch again. My original music 3 years ago had come from bearshare.com, but when I tried to download my songs from there my security system and firewall kept denying it. Then I decided to try itunes, but movie maker would not accept the file type of the music files from itunes. So google saved the day again!!! They referred me to this site....www.mp3clan.com and I was on my way in no time! No sign up required, no pop ups, hassle free, and it's FREE! Just type in the song you'd like and then download the mp3 version to your computer.
My slideshow has 265 pictures and is 30 minutes long. This will give you an idea of how many pictures you'll want to include in yours. I don't think I'd want to go much over 30 minutes.
I spent some time searching for the perfect songs, so if you want to save some time, here are the songs I inserted in my slideshow and I downloaded all of them for free from www.mp3clan.com.
1. You've Got a Friend - Toy Story
2. Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo - Louis Armstrong
3. Don't Worry Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin
4. Happy - Pharrell Williams
5. We Are the World - Joe Cocker, Celine Dion,...
6. Best Day of my Life - Glee Cast
7. Brave - Sara Bareilles
8. What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
9. Goodbye Song for Kids - Unknown Artist
You can also save yourself some time by downloading and using my DVD cover {here}. Just print, cut, and place inside a jewel DVD case.
Good luck with your EOY slideshow! Hopefully my tips will save you some time!