iMovie versus Garageband for podcasts

Marisa Guastaferro and I collaborate on a Romeo and Juliet podcast. In previous years, the students have used Garageband to put merge images, audio, and music. However, the finished product is a small video that is really ideal for viewing on an iPod and not a big screen. I used to use Quicktime to export their podcast into a bigger format, but it was still pixelated. This year, we decided to use iMovie to blend our projects. I found the above tutorial for creating a slideshow with soundtrack in iMovie.

Um, one of my seventh graders didn’t know how to insert a CD into her laptop. Is it me or her?

Today, a seventh grader asked me how to burn an iMovie to a DVD.

Me: Let’s export your movie to Quicktime.
Kid: I exported it already as an m4v.
Me: Okay, let’s drag that to Quicktime and save it as a mov file.
Kid: I did that already.
Me: What’s the problem then?
Kid: I don’t how to put it on a DVD to give the teacher.
Me: Well, your mov file is 268MB, and a CD holds 700MB, so we just need a blank CD and not a DVD.
— I handed her a blank disk —
Kid: Where do I put it?
Me (slowly and incredulously): In the CD slot on your MacBook.
Kid: Where’s that?

At this point, I was flummoxed. Have I done such a bad job reinforcing basic skills in my quest to do cool projects? Or is this student just so used to flash drives, cloud computing (with Google Apps and our server), streaming music/video, and/or sharing everything via social sites?

Sony is turning into the Grim Reaper of technology (and my memories of the 20th Century) what with the demise of…
The 3.5″ floppy: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/sony-announces-the-death-of-the-floppy-disk/
The Casette Walkman: http://technews.am/conversations/techdirt/sony_to_stop_making_cassette_walkmen_yes_it_was_still_making_them_