Experimental MumScience + Children = Fun + Mess

Friday morning, my daughter Erynn didn’t want to go to school. We’d had a few sunny days and I think she just wanted to stay home and play. She had a definite “Friday” feeling!

Desperation in her voice she said, “But, Mam, why do i have to STILL go to school?”, “I can read now and do sums; I just don’t NEED to go anymore”. Oh, the world of a 6 year old!

I told her that we learn something new every day. “Well. what did you actually learn yesterday then!” was her charming response.

“Well, actually, I learnt how to embed videos into a Word Press blog!”

Now hurry up and get to school, so I can learn some more….

It started simply enough, I wanted to embed a video into my post.

Using the Word Press insert video function, I got an error message telling me that my file size was too small. I tried a tiny file but I didn’t like the way that Word Press created a link to the video rather than embedding the video directly into the post.

So I moved onto You Tube. I found it easy to use and pretty quick to upload. However, I didn’t like having links to similar videos at the end of my clip. What if there was something unsuitable for my intended audience there?

Next I tried Vimeo, but the upload time was so slow, I gave up.

I moved on to Blip.tv. Although my videos uploaded from my PC quickly and easy, they took an age to actually run in Word Press. They also had adverts along the footer, which I didn’t want.

Finally I tried Viddler. I liked this one from the beginning. I found it the most intuative to use and the clear dashboard view is a bonus. but most importantly, the videos loaded quickly and I love the neat format of the finished embeded clip.

Here’s to many more happy experimental videos….

Photo Credit: Reading in the Flowers by Norby

Next Time: A Lot of Science, in a Little Can…..