Running aground

Having enjoyed the last six assignments for my archaeology course, my massive open on-line course from Brown University, I have just run aground on the latest one which was to create a podcast. Now may I should have chosen one of the other choices, writing about three archaeological organizations (sounds a bit boring) write a review of  “a museum visit, visit an archaeological site or monument, attend a lecture, convene an archaeological discussion group” (sounds a little dull)  but I thought I would try something new and different… so I went out and photographed a particular part of our village, did a little voice recording, took a couple of little movies which I thought I could put together into a little presentation, especially since I have a geeky son who assured me it would be simplicity itself…

Ho-hum… he recommended a video site and I duly loaded all the photos I wanted to include, and the vids, in the right order, chose a theme… and then…. how do I save it? How do I preview it? Where is there a ‘help’ button? I go back to the tutorial… eventually (having had to find it on youtube) which does not help in any way… I find a button which seems to indicate that I will save my work so far… click it… and everything vanishes.

Ho-hum, back to the drawing board.

My project, by the way, was on the lime industry in our village of Uphill; limestone quarried here, some of it burned in the limekiln by the quarry using coal brought across the Bristol Channel from Wales, used locally and exported out, possibly on the same ships which brought the coal in.