Open Source Editing Software

This week I had the opportunity to read about the different editing software programs available as open source. The editing process is very interesting, and I had always thought it was only pertinent to big productions, and not necessary for home-created videos. How lost I was with this assumption. It is completely true that big and important productions relay on advanced and sophisticated editing processes, but it is beneficial for us, regular people to create nice and enjoyable memories out of our homemade videos. I believe that as teachers, we should get familiarize with these technologies, as a way to engage our students and make their education pertinent to them. Most of today’s learners have already experiences with these technologies and enjoy their integration in the classroom, however to be successful the students need to be active participant. This means that we need to give them the opportunity to develop their technology skills through active projects and not passive presentations. In order to really take advantage of these resources the students become the active creators, while teachers become passive guides, and in some cases even the learners. There is no shame in us, educators, to learn from our students, about technology, after all it is their natural environment.
Today we have the advantage to search through the Internet, for open source editing software that fulfills our needs, for those homemade projects. I explored two of these open sources editing software, Wax and Windows Movie Maker. Through my investigations of the different software, I found that Windows Movie Maker is more user friendly, especially for beginners like me than Wax, and it is available for any PC, and is already install in new computers running on Windows operating system (Desktop-Video-Guide, 2009). Windows Movie Maker offers a wide variety of features that makes your editing process one enjoyable. It also includes different file extensions to save your project, like .asf, .wma, .wav, .mp3, .wmv, .mpeg, .mpg, and .wm, among others. One of the most important user friendly features I found in Windows Movie Maker is that has drag and drop features to make creating and editing your movie easier (Desktop-Video-Guide, 2009). The Wax editing software is not as user friendly as the Windows Movie Maker, and it does not have the same variety of file extensions, the ones available are .avi, .wav, .mpeg. While exploring the Wax software I found necessary to have some technical knowledge, and editing experience. Now, one good thing about Wax is that can work as an add on with Windows Movie Maker. Now as a totally beginner in the editing world I have decided to use Windows Movie Maker as my editing tool.


Reference:
Desktop-Video-Guide. (n.d.). Top 5 free video editing software programs. Retrieved on April 12, 2009, from http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/top-5-free-video-editing-software-review.html