Cool presentations: Animoto

As a library media specialist, part of my job is to make my patrons as aware as possible of everything I can about the library at my school.  I make a lot of videos for the teachers and students about everything.  I make tutorials, new release videos and videos about what we have for them.   One program I use often to make videos is Animoto.  I have learned that Animoto is awesome and easy and I use it weekly to make my new release videos.  It's fast and fun and I think every teacher out there should know about this program because you can put together something for any class.

Animoto sets images and text to music.  It contains a set of royalty free music, simple text inserts and the capability of linking to several graphic sites and storage sites (such as dropbox and flickr.)  I have learned, too, that teachers can get a free educational account that allows for longer videos (the typical free video is 30 seconds, but with the educational version, the videos are as long as the songs you choose.)

It's very easy to use and the fact that the end result can be exported to YouTube.  I embed the YouTube videos right into my library blog.  I also post the links to the school Facebook account so the videos reach as many people as possible.  I love how simple the program is to use.  It doesn't take much to learn and every teacher can put this into their bag of tricks and use it to make something awesome.