If the logo weren't in the middle of the video, it would be much greater!
Community Review for Animoto: Slideshow Maker
My Take
I believe that Animoto could have used other way to show their advertisement instead of putting the logo right in the middle of the ready videos, forcing the purchase of the paid version. There is other software available that would not have this “detail” in the ready products and we might want to choose one that has the advertisement in a place that does not cause problems for the viewer. To start the software, it is not so easy. It is not actually for little students, but I tried. It worked but I had to give extra support. There are few apps that are destined to little kids and the use of videos out of photos. For it to be great with students, it would be necessary to have demo videos.
How I Use It
Students had to make a video out of the photos and videos they recorded and took during the unit we were studying. They had done it with the Ipads and I wanted them to make the video that expressed everything that we studied and learned. I wanted them to be independent and as I tried the Animoto before and saw that it was easy to understand how it worked, I decided to use it for this task. In pairs, students sat at computers to work on this. The pictures were loaded in Google Drive, so everyone would access to them. In the beginning, students were not that independent as I thought they would be. As I gave some instructions, they were able to carry on with their work until the end. The frustration came in the end when the video was ready and the kids saw that big logo in the middle of their videos. It was disappointing for me too, but I knew it would happen with the free version of Animoto. Special needs students would be able to make the video with little help, so it is also great to use with these students.