Animoto.com is a great website for making presentations and slideshows. I was first introduced to animoto by taking an iDiscovery course. I was skeptical at first teaching math as to how I could use this in my class. I don’t use PowerPoint presentations very much because I think math is a subject that is best taught by working through the process and explaining as you go. However once I explored the website and looked at some of the samples they show, my gears started spinning. Anyone can make free 30 second clips but that is not long enough for most of what I want to do. Fortunately, teachers can apply for a free account that also provides an activation code so students can make full length videos too. I have created videos that demonstrate how to perform different geometric constructions. My students find these more engaging than just watching me make the constructions on the smartboard, with the added benefit that they can access them at home with internet access. Check out the sample video:
Additionally, this is a great alternative to having your students create PowerPoints. Before discovering animoto, I had my geometry students create slideshows to illustrate the properties of specific quadrilaterals when we studied that chapter. The animoto presentations are so much better; I will not be going back. Not only do they look professional created, but it takes all the time spent on animations and transitions out of the project by analyzing the music and choreographing the slides. When using PowerPoint, my students would spend have the time making it look cute, and then the content was very poor and incorrect. Now I have my students use PowerPoint to create the slides only, and then we export them as .jpgs to upload in animoto.
Finally the other thing that I have used animoto for is to create DVD’s. I coach varsity volleyball at the high school where I teach, and this past year I created a video for senior night and our awards night. In the past I just talked about the different events of the season, but last fall we relived them. As part of their gifts, I gave all of the seniors a copy of both DVD’s. The website makes it so easy to design, and create. There is an upgrade charge (I think $5) to get HD DVD quality video, but it is well worth it. Then you can download and burn to your DVD’s.
***One thing to note as of right now, the videos will only be as long as your song and you can only upload 1 song. For the volleyball videos to be longer, I merged 2 song files into one .mp3. This worked great but required additional software that I found free on the internet. There is also a 10MB limit for the song. This site is constantly adding new features and improving existing one. I hope in the future you will be able to add multiple songs.
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