I am NOT Smarter than a Fifth Grader

Actually, there are a lot of questions that I get incorrect on that fun game show, but in this case, I am referring to the significant difference between being a fifth grader today and being that age when we old-timers were younger.

Remember when it was enough to answer a question by talking directly with a teacher? Or when writing a paragraph that was more than three sentences was considered going beyond the requirements? Life was so much simpler back then, and we still thought we had it tough in school.

Tonight, I've spent about the past two hours working on a project with my fifth grade daughter. She is applying to be in a particular club at school, and rather than just being able to raise her hand to say, "I want to join!" (that's what we did, right??), she is required to submit an application to show how creative and excited she is so she might get selected as a member of this group.

So, you might be wondering, what is it that we have to do? We have to make a DVD of her doing a mock video announcement presentation and interview for the school. I consider myself somewhat technologically savvy, but I do not have modern video equipment to make this as easy as it might sound. Rather, I have what I consider an older but still nice camera, a fairly modern computer, and your typical average DVD player.

Well, guess what? These three items might be great individually, but collectively they hate each other!!! The formats vary on each component, and trying to sync them together has been a total nightmare!! All I can say is thank goodness for Google! I tried a bunch of different searches and finally found a software that appeared to be safe that converted .avi files to files that could be read by a DVD player. So, I took the chance and downloaded it.

A test DVD was burned with some karaoke files I have stored on the computer. The files were converted and burned and with great trepidation, we took the DVD to the player. Squeals of delight were heard as the video came on the screen. It actually worked!!! Considering that this project is due on Monday, I am soooooooo thankful that we were able to make this work.

Of course, now we still have to create the video file of my daughter and locate the software on my computer (yeah, I always seem to have trouble finding them again!), convert that file and get it burned successfully. I only hope that it works that time, too. It just has to....it HAS TO!

When did fifth graders have to become technology experts and DVD creators? I have a college degree, did pretty well on my ACTs, and can even keep up my end of a conversation about red zone offenses and fantasy football....but I am NOT smarter than a fifth grader!!