Educational Uses for Animoto

I've been playing around with several new online tools over the summer and experimenting with how to use them in the classroom. This post highlights the online tool, Animoto.

Animoto provides a unique way to incorporate images, video clips, music, and text into a short video which you can share via E-mail, blog/website, YouTube, or downloaded to a computer for use in presentations. You don’t have to know much about technology: simply upload your pictures and movie clips, chose a soundtrack, and Animoto does the rest.

Educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account for use in the classroom. The Animoto Plus account expands the features available for educators and students--one being that you are not limited to only 30 second productions.

Andrew Marcinek at Classroom 2.0 provides a number of ideas for using Animoto in his Language Arts classroom to help students understand themes, characterizations, setting, and symbolism. As Andrew points out, Animoto uses an "MTV style" of editing the clips and images to match the music selection, so it is perfect for highlighting main elements in a novel or chapter.

Both the teacher and the students can utilize this technology. You can introduce a topic, vocabulary words, period in history, study skills. You can also have your students demonstrate understanding by creating a video or review for finals or midterms by producing a video. You could show the videos on the first day of class next year/semester to get a new batch of students excited about what you will be doing in class.

Teach Web 2.0 provides a SWOT analysis for using Animoto in the classroom as well as a variety of ideas for how to use Animoto.

Animoto are showcasing many of these great uses on their own website to try and inspire creativity in their members. Click here to see examples of how teachers are using Animoto in the classroom today. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.