Students are more visual these days and all about the
videos. Why not challenge them to use this interest for educational purposes.
Two easy and multi-platform options are Animoto and GoAnimate. As mentioned in
the previous blog post, videos are a great way to set the hook and for students
to demonstrate their understanding of a concept. While the free trials/versions
are limited in length, concepts can be broken down into their parts for a class
to examine a topic more in depth at the teacher’s discretion.
Animoto allows you to take images to create a video. This is
great to do with primary source images or student drawings. They have a
selection of music options to serve as the background music. To tell the story
you can add text over the images. Another option is to have students add text
to the images beforehand or create a PPT and save it as a JPEG to use in
Animoto. You can create your production on a computer, tablet, or even using
your smart phone. Animoto is free for a 30 second shareable video. To make
longer downloadable productions, a Teacher Plus account costs $30 a year.
Here is a brief video I made for a Google Docs training
shred session.
Google Tools Slam 2013
Another option for video making is GoAnimate. As the name
suggests, it is an animated short. It took me a bit to get going on this,
however my students were quick learners and ran with it. There are a variety of
settings, characters, animations, and voices that one can choose from. You can
also use your own voice. Again, storyboarding prior to recording facilitates
the selection and production process. Animoto offers a free 14 day trial and is
a paid product after that. They also have teacher and district licenses with
more options available. Again, I have found the investment worth it.
Here is one my students made for their Civil Rights case presentation.
