Animoto my photos

Tired of the same old… same old?  Looking for something new and exciting to try out with your students?  Well, hang on and let me show you...

This is Animoto..

Reflections on the process of learning about Animoto

I’ll admit that this week’s topic has left me once again wondering where I’ve been over that last few years and why I have not heard of these tools.  Now, I have heard of Animoto, but only just recently.  A classmate of mine used it for a wrap up project for a class I took this past summer. 

I was disappointed to learn that with Animoto you can only create 30 second videos (including 12 pictures) for free. For longer videos in ‘low res’ it costs 3 bucks and high res is more. You can sign up for an educator account.    This gives you all access for 6 months of use absolutely free! After that, it's $45 per year. The nice thing about the educator account is you can share the registration link with your students and they can sign up and get the same all access!

Learning how to use Animoto was pretty painless for the most part: sign up was easy, and getting started with creating was a sinch.  However, I ran into a big of a snag while working on my first project.  I had just finished uploading my 11^th slide when I accidentally clicked where I shouldn’t have and wound up loosing ten slides!  I ended up having to re-upload them, which was a bit of a pain.  Other than that the process was fairly smooth. 

This first project focused on my younger brother, Trent and his wife and child. Their anniversary is coming up, so I may email it off to them.    

Next, I delved into the photos from my cell phone camera.  For this one, I experimented with including video, text and effects, such as ‘spotlight.’

Discussion of multimedia sharing sites in terms of my own personal learning

I had a blast using Animoto.  It’s definitely a multimedia tool that I’ll use again in the future for personal use as well as with my students.    

When I was exposed to it the first time, a classmate was using it to showcase learning her learning over the term.  It was a great way to celebrate the learning in a fun appealing way.  It was very effective and powerful.  My poem was okay too.

Discussion of multimedia sharing sites in terms of teaching & learning

I can imagine tones of possibilities for Animoto for teaching and learning.  I think children would love to use a tool such as this, for any number of projects.  Valenza (2008) suggests using the "tool for any projects for which we'd formerly create a collage."   She describes the creation process as "the gathering of multiple pieces to create new context."

I think this tool would help us to enable children to become critical thinkers.  While I was creating mine, I really had to question which images would really help communicate the message I was trying to convey. I also had to consider what song would contribute to the video and compliment the images well.

One of the drawbacks currently would be the speed of our lab computers.  I could see this being a somewhat painful process.  For me to log onto a computer in the lab and log into my Outlook email takes almost a full five minutes!  So, using this tool, could be a tad frustrating for kids.   Even with my Mac and a variety of decent internet connections, it still seemed to freeze, even after it had been loaded.

Another issue to consider is copyright issues.  Students may not want to use the music that is available on the site, but rather a current popular song.  If they illegally download it and use it in their presentation are we condoning this piracy.  When I was working on my projects, I found that I could only access songs that I had not paid for.  Not sure why that is.

Another slight concern would be privacy.  My brother and his wife didn't consent for their photos to be used in such a manner and posted online.  But, lo and behold, here they are.  But, I guess in the classroom, we would have final say as to what is 'published.'

So, I'm curious... what program do you think will be used less often because of this tool?

References:

Valenza, Joyce. (2008). Announcing: Animoto for education. School Library Journal http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/1560024356.html.