Vidcasts

We discussed vidcasts. How to make them and what purposes they serve. I like the ideas of vidcasts and look forward to creating them, but I also think that they can be a little stressful. There are so many ways to create them, it is hard to narrow down which one will work best.
I like the idea of using a vidcast to create movie trailers for each of the books that will be studied in my class. It will be fun for the students to get a different take on an introduction to a unit/book. We are creating on in for The Great Gatsby in our group. I am very excited to finish it and get everything all synced up. I want to create vidcasts for a lot of the books that I have read that I know will be taught in the grades that I will be teaching.
I think it would be fun for both me as a teacher and for my students, to create some vidcasts for grammer rules, punctuation, or the six traits of writing to help teach my students and use them as an example and then have them create one explainind the rules and present them to the class. I also think that the vidcast is a great way for them to do a book report or book response instead of writing it out. The students can include all the same information, but using a different medium for the assignment. This will hopefully make it more fun for them and slightly easier on me so that I don't have and million and one papers to grade.
I also think that it would be fun to turn written announcements into a vidcast. I think it would be easier for students to pay attention to what is being said.
I also like the idea of setting poetry to music and pictures through a vidcast. I believe that the best way for students to experience poetry is through as many senses as possible. I really love creating vidcasts for poetry. The experience of the poem is so enhanced and enjoyable.
I hope that as a department, we can collaborate and create vidcasts that are relevant to all of our classes or even throughout other departments and even sister schools. I think that it would be great to be able to share our vidcasts to help enhance any or all lessons.
The stressful part of making a vidcast is finding which method works the best for you and getting everything to sync up. Also, comming up with ideas at  first is a little hard. I am very picky about having everything match up, from finding the perfect music to matching the narration and the pictures to everything. It drives me crazy sometimes, but I am a bit obsessive or a perfectionist in making them match up.
All-in-all I like vidcasts and plan to use them in my classroom and have my students use them as well