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.

Animoto and some potential ideas

I am a little behind on the times, as I have only used animoto once or twice.  I tried it awhile back and didn't know if I could benefit from it in my foreign language class.  Then, it hit me, why not look at it again and see if I can use it for the library. Apparently, that was the ticket- use it in the media center.

I took a few snapshots of some library books we were adding to the collection, uploaded them to the site, added a little sound and voila, I had a short video to add to the website.  I got to thinking, how easy that is to do a quick presentation to something.  Upload a few images and sound and it's done.  I can change the new releases on the school website once a month or once a week if I want to.  I buy a lot of titles at once and add them a little at a time so the kids always have something new.  New titles sit on my back office shelves all year long.  How hard is it to start snapping images of 8 or 9 and keeping them bundled until I release them.  I just embedded the video into the blog and I was set to go.

But the question still remains, how can this be used for other people and other ways?  I don't know if I can envision it being used in a foreign language for more than a flashy way to present a presentation, but, what about in other classes?   Here are some things that might be able to be done with animoto:

1.  Book trailer.  Upload snapshots of things that relate to the book.  Have the cover and fill in the rest of the image blocks with related scenes.   Let's use Harry Potter for example, image of cover, image of magic wand, a boy, evil, old wizard, castle, commentary about release.  Add it to music and voila.  It's an easy way for students to make a small project about a book they read. It could be treated as a book report, per se.

2. Video Travel Log:  Have students get into creative commons images and form a "travel log" to music.  They could build a presentation about something they did and do an oral report to backup the information. Have it be a multiple scored project.

3. History/ Sociology Log:  Have students find events in history or social events and assemble a program.  Maybe a day in the life of a knight or the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Remember creative commons, however, when you send them out to get photos.

4. Family tree/ genealogy project: Have students put images of family members to music.  After they present the show, have them do an oral presentation.

5. Science Fair Project:  Have students do the process of their project into an animoto. Take photos from start to finish, then present afterwards.

6. Art portfolio:  Have student artists assemble their work from the year into a presentation.  They can place it onto a class wiki to share with anyone or just classmates.

All in all, if you are looking for a snazzy way to make a presentation, give animoto a shot.  There are a few downfalls, it takes a while to upload video (but you can link it to photobucket or flickr) and sometimes the videos have to buffer.  Enjoy!