Animoto to the Stage, Take I

Why the interest in Animoto?

Last year a new member our staff used Animoto during one of the school wide celebrations.  Needless to say, I was more that impressed.  The animation, transitions, sound effects, and overall quality was more than impressive. I noticed at the end of the video presentation the word “Animoto” appeared at the start of the credits.  This is how I knew about the program. However, due to the rather busy schedule of a teacher, I was never able to actually play with the program. This year is a different story! By taking a web 2.0 class, I was given the opportunity to explore programs that I have always wanted to play with.  

Highlighting the Research?

Berger & Trexler identified Animoto as a great tool for project based activities for students K-12 (p. 139). Users can upload digital photos, add back ground music and even add text if they choose (p. 139). Teachers can create educational accounts where students can have a safe environment to create their videos that can be shared vie email, blog post, website, YouTube or by downloading it directly onto a computer (p. 140) 

Setting up the account

Setting up my Animoto account was a straight forward process.  After going to the Animoto.com website I simply clicked on the “Sign Up” button that was located in a big green box right in the middle of the page, I couldn’t have missed it if I was trying.  Filling in the “Create an account” required fields took only a couple of minutes and then my account was ready for me to get creative.

 

The Frenzy over Prezi! Prezi I

I was really interested in exploring web 2.0 tools that allowed users to create presentations. My students are very familiar with power point but the idea of a tool that allowed for creative presentations outside of the box of power point was very appealing to me. I was also looking for something with ease of use. Microsoft's suite of tools are very powerful but can be extremely time consuming when looking for ways to bring life to your presentations (Yee, 2010). "Prezi: A Different Way to Present" changed the way I think about presentations and how to give them. Prezi doesn't use slides, and doesn't require any type of installation (Yee, 2010). The simplicity of web 2.0 tools (particularly Prezi) and their ability to create individualized and interesting products make them perfect tools for the classroom.

So I started a journey to explore Prezi and all that it has to offer. I never expected to get as involved with Prezi as I did. Therefore, I have much more to say than should be fit into a single blog post.  I have grouped my discussion of Prezi into a series of blog posts. For instance, this post is "Prezi I" and the next will be "Prezi II" and so on.

I hope that you enjoy the Prezi journey as much as I did. My next post will explain more about my journey. I leave you with this video about Prezi for now.

 














 References

YEE, K., & HARGIS, J. (2010). PREZI: A Different Way to Present. Turkish Online Journal Of Distance Education (TOJDE), 11(4), 9-11.