How Can Teachers Use It?
Your best bet for Animoto is to draw on its strengths and recognize its limitations. For an art project or maybe a book report, it could be useful and engaging. It's certainly fun to create slideshows and satisfying to watch the finished presentations. Also, it's a bit of a primer on video-editing software. Choices are limited, which makes it easy to use, but it also means the teaching potential is limited.
If you're using a lot of video in the classroom, you might be interested in our teaching tips and resources to Get Students Thinking Critically About Video.
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What's It Like?
Making flashy video slideshow presentations with Animoto is simple. First students select Create a Project, and the site walks them through each step. They choose a theme, upload short video clips and their own images or images from a Creative Commons sites such as Flickr, upload their own songs or songs from the site, and add text if they want -- and wha-bang! The site creates a video and publishes it to their Animoto account. The finished product is a slick and engaging presentation that will appeal to kids. Still, it won't let them express their ideas in a complex way.
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Is It Good For Learning?
For teachers trying to engage students in digital storytelling, Animoto might not be the best tool. Creating a slideshow is simple and straightforward. But they trade ease of use with the automated process for editorial control. The main problem is you can't control transitions; the site syncs them to the rhythm of the song. Also, you can't add your own voice narration, so the emotional resonance of digital storytelling gets lost. Students can add text, which does let them include more substantive content, but getting there takes a couple extra steps: They need access to the teacher's account (or their own Animoto Plus account) to avoid the video-length limits of the free account.
Once published, users can share the link, grab and embed code, export to other video sites including YouTube, or download a version to the desktop. New themes for projects and new music tracks, sorted by genre, are added regularly, so there's always something new.
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A video tutorial
Uploading of images
A look at a project under construction
A visual tour of Animoto
A vast selection of themes
