ANIMOTO
Creating MTV-Style Videos

Address: http://animoto.com

Animoto is an amazing Web 2.0 video creation tool that can be used to quickly create a great looking presentation. Users begin by uploading images, music, and short video clips. The site also has royalty-free music available on the site, as well as a library of images and video clips that can be used.

Titles and additional text can be added. Selected images can be highlighted by using the spotlight feature.

Animoto analyzes the selected pictures, music and video clips and creates a custom video. If you don’t like the video, you can remix using the same images and music. No two videos are ever the same. Videos can be emailed and embedded on wikis, blogs and other web sites. Thirty-second videos are free; a fee is charged for longer videos.

Animoto for Education

The site has addressed security concerns by making videos created using the educational accounts private. They can only be seen by the users unless they are emailed to parents or embedded on a web site or linked to from another site.

21st Century Skills

Creativity, effective communication skills and critical thinking skills come into play when students use this Web 2.0 tool to design and create videos. Creative juices flow when students suddenly become video producers.

The site’s text blocks have a limited number of characters so students must write concisely and succinctly.

Students must critically look at their choices of images, text and music to make decisions as to the best choices and arrangements. Critically evaluating each video, editing and revising as needed, and remixing videos develop important 21st century learning skills.

The visual, audio, and textual elements in producing the videos help students produce visual messages and strengthen visual literacy skills.

In the Classroom

Teacher Use - Teachers can use the site to create a video as an introduction to an upcoming curriculum lesson/unit.

This video is used to introduce the five themes of geography - “Geography Themes.”

Here is an example of using Animoto in a science class – “Animoto in Education”

English teachers can introduce a lesson on “Plagiarism and Citing Sources” with this video.

Student Use - This Web 2.0 tool enables students to quickly create presentations without having to spend a lot of time learning how to edit and manipulate presentation software. Time can be spent on developing a video’s content instead of the technical aspect of the application.

While this application can be lots of fun for students, teachers should strive to design lessons for creating videos that use higher order thinking skills.

A sixth grade teacher uses the site as a vocabulary study tool. First she created a private Google Group for her students. After each student is assigned a vocabulary word, they locate pictures on the Internet that represents their word. After pictures are uploaded to the site, they add text for a title, definition and pronunciation of the word.

Videos are short, no more than 30 seconds long. Links to the videos are posted on the class’ Google Group page so students can view them to study for their vocabulary tests. The teacher reports that vocabulary test scores have dramatically risen to a 98% pass rate.

There is an example – “Vocabulary: Grimace” – at the bottom of this wiki page.

After gathering necessary information for their videos’ content, students need to analyze and organize the information and media elements. Here is a storyboard students can use to plan and organize their videos.

The examples of videos at the Animoto site show the diverse ways teachers are using it in their classrooms.

Tutorial

Here’s a video to get you started – “Animoto Tutorial.”

Safety Concerns

Remind students not to identify themselves with their full first and last names or with any other personal information when posting their work online.

Videos created by students using the educational accounts are private. Outsiders can not contact students using these accounts. Teachers should register on the educators’ page.

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