Animoto

One great website I like to use in the classroom is Animoto. Animoto is a place where you can create videos with pictures and sound. It is an extremely easy to use website and tool. You are able to subscribe to the website to create videos of any length, however, without subscribing you are able to create videos up to the length of 30 seconds. This length is perfect for students because then you can make sure they do not create overly long videos if they are being presented to the class.

Like I said, this tool is very easy to use. You start by picking a template for your video. This template will act as the background and determine what the transitions will look like. The next step is adding in your pictures and or words. To can use any pictures you would like. For instance, I got all mine from Google Images. You just save them to your picture folder and then upload them to Animoto when it asks for them. Then you pick your background music. You can choose from a wide variety of music from Country, to Classical, to Electronic. You click the music you want and it is immediately entered into your Animoto. That's it. Click on next and your video is ready to be shared.

There are many ways to incorporate Animoto into the classroom. I will share an example that I have used. In my fourth grade classroom we were learning about the presidents. Each student was assigned a different president in which they had to research and present to the class. At the end of the presentation they were to show the class the video they made (using Animoto of course). The video needed to include the name of the president, who made the video, and pictures of the president they had researched. Below is one that I created for Abraham Lincoln.

If you would like to try out Animoto, click here. http://animoto.com/

Abraham Lincoln