Animoto has been one of my favorite new tools to use this school year. It allows students to use photos, text, and music to make polished video presentations, and my kids have found it incredibly easy to use.
From a language teacher's point-of-view, the text students insert into presentations can be one of the most useful sources for a lesson. The main text boxes allow for only twenty-two characters, and the sub text boxes allow for thirty.
So when, for example, my students create videos depicting excerpts from 1984 or use Animoto to reflect on their oral history projects, they must choose their words very carefully. This lends itself nicely to discussions of strong verbs and economy of language, as well as other aspects of diction and syntax.
It's also an opportunity for vocabulary building:
Student 1: " I need to say Julia was 'a rebel from the waist down,' but I have only twelve characters left!"
Student 2: "Promiscuous!"
I'd love to hear other ideas for using Animoto in the classroom. Please post if you've got any suggestions. If Animoto is new to you, here's a bit more info from Free Technology for Teachers.
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Animoto is a great tool to use with reluctant teachers because it is so easy to use. Here is a post about how I am using Animoto in the classroom.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.edtechswami.com/digital-storytelling-with-animoto-my-teachmeet-presentation/
It's great for displaying any class projects and sharing students' work with the outside world. As a teacher, I've also found it useful as presentation tool for conferences. The word limit forces you to summarize often complex ideas clearly and succinctly.
ReplyDeleteHere's a class project and an academic paper both presented using Animoto:
http://bit.ly/9AA9Pz
http://bit.ly/spywalk