Good or Grounded, what do you prefer?

get the flash player

My students figured out how to use GoAnimate for Students surprisingly quickly. Understanding how the timeline at the bottom of the screen worked was the only area I felt I needed to provide implicit instruction in. The quality of the finished videos are fantastic! The real challenge was keeping them on task and moving forward to complete their production as the many options are fun to experiment with. My students really like the text to speech function and the ability to record heir own voices (I have found this to be lacking from most of the free alternative options). I love that GoAnimate creates an easily publishable product where you don't have to worry so much about your students' identities being revealed. I do miss Domo by GoAnimate which was free and a bit simpler to use. It's a shame they shut it down. Overall, this tool is great for teaching ELA concepts including POV, dialogue, sequence, characters, setting, editing, plot and much more. It can also be used for students to demonstrate what they have learned in any topic (the ability to import your own images and audio files is also helpful for this.) This is also a great option for a maker space or free time to create. The template options allow an easier way to a simple video that allows students to just focus on the characters dialogue. The studio offers highly customizable options including the ability to create your own characters in some themes.

GoAnimate is expensive, and even the 'for education' accounts are not cheap. I like that it is easy to use; students didn't have any problems figuring it out. If I were in charge of budget, I don't know if I would approve the cost for this tool. It is fun and creative, but doesn't really add to students' learning that much. They could show the same learning by creating a storyboard, for example. They could use Voki as well, although they could only have one character speaking at a time.