To Animoto & Beyond!

At the end of the school year, I always like to send my students off with a little gift. Memories and experiences are priceless.  I want my students to look back on their first grade experience with a sense of love, belonging, and accomplishment.  Each school year, I have created a video documenting our experiences with learning and celebrating. I also include big events like field trips and field days.  The videos were mostly photographs with text and music and some video recording mixed in.

In the past, I used software called Muvee which came on my former laptop. I later upgraded to a better version once the trial period ran out.  Another year, I used a program made by Microsoft, but at this point I don't even remember what it was. I believe it was part of Microsoft Office Suite, but I'm not 100% sure.

Well, I was finally able to play around with an awesome program for creating videos, slideshows, and digital stories!  I've been exploring with Animoto to create slideshows of my engagement photos.  I could have created a free account with the capability of creating 30-second videos, but making these types of videos for seven years in the classroom, I knew 30 seconds wasn't enough for me. Fortunately, the pricing was reasonable for creating longer videos ($30 a year), and I'm happy to say I've found the slideshow program I'm going to utilize in the classroom!  Check out this 60 second video telling you about Animoto.  Then, read on to see what the educator perks are!

The great news I *JUST* discovered is unlimited videos for educators!  You will need your school email address and class website/blog. Animoto will process your application and send you an educators code for the free account. On the educator page, Animoto is described in this way:

"Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, an ideal tool for creating videos and presentations.  It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life."

It really is very simple to use. You just choose one of their songs or upload your own.  Choose your photos and video.  Add some text and off you go!  When deciding how you want to share your Animoto, you can email it, embed it (as I have at the end of this post), post it to Facebook, or upload to YouTube.  When I clicked on, "Sharing" and "More Options", I have the option to post to MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, Posterous, WordPress, and Tumblr.  When I click on "More Services..." over 300 options were available!  Some examples were Yoolink, Throwpile, Kaboodle, and iGoogle.  Incorporating Animoto into your classroom is bound to open the door to even more ways to get digitally connected and share knowledge. What a great way to incorporate those National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)!

Below, you can see my first Animoto for my engagement photo shoot as well as some education examples of hatching chickens in a third grade classroom and a digital story about the Texas Oil Boom.  Thanks for visiting, and I wish you the best in your educational endeavors! It was a pleasure learning, blogging, and commenting with you!  :-)

You can view the Animoto page here with more information about the photos.