Have you ever wanted your students to make a video for a class project but felt uneasy about the laborious process and the amount of class time it would take to accomplish this task? Fear not! Animoto is here to save you time and still give you the video your students can enjoy and share!
I have personally used Animoto for back to school nights and in my Language Arts classes to help students understand themes, characterization and symbolism within the novels we cover. Animoto is simple, easy and free for educators to use. All you need is a digital camera (or properly cited photos form the web), a laptop and an Animoto account for educators. Watch how simple it is…
Here are some ways you can utilize Animoto in your classroom
Create Novel Movie Trailers!
Animoto utilizes “MTV Style” editing to show brief clips of a specific subject or theme set to music. This is perfect for gleaning the main elements of a novel or chapter you just read in class.
At the end of the school year when you are reviewing for finals or mid terms (depending on your schools academic calendar) have the students make a brief Animoto video that they can use to
Reflect on what the novel or unit was about
Pick out the important elements of the chapter or novel
i. Main Points
ii. Characters
iii. Themes
iv. Symbols
v. Setting
Tell them that their audience will be next year’s incoming class and they have to convince them that this novel will be an amazing read! Just like film directors would do with a summer blockbuster.
If you want to stretch out this assignment and go a step further, visit http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/ and you can create movie posters for the novels.
i. You see what is happening here…Students are creating a product that requires them to use prior knowledge and also display that knowledge in a creative manner.
As a teacher, you can show these videos on the first day of class next year. You can print out and hang up the movie posters of the novels on your bulletin board.
Here is how easy it is to create an Animoto video
and...
Here is what I just created in roughly five minutes
Creating Animoto Videos in other Disciplines!
For Vocabulary words
At the beginning of the Vocabulary unit have go over the list of words with your students as you normally would at the beginning of a unit.
Have students define words, provide proper parts of speech and provide sentences (maybe 3 to 5).
Students are arranged in groups of two. Each group will be given the following:
i. One digital camera
ii. One Vocabulary word
Students will have to create an Animoto video for the word they are given. Students must include in their video:
i. The word
ii. The part of speech
iii. The definition
iv. At least two sentences
v. An image relating to the word
Once the videos are created, the teacher will present the videos to the class and will serve as a brief review for the upcoming Vocabulary quiz.
This would be a flashy way to introduce a new formula or problem. You can take the above examples and apply it to your discipline.
For Math teachers
In history class you could have students research an Amendment and make an Animoto video displaying the main points of that Amendment and also find images that represent that Amendment. This could work for numerous historical units:
For History teachers the possibilities are endless.
i. Presidents
ii. New Countries covered
iii. Bill of Rights
iv. American Wars
For Special Education and Life skills Teachers
This would be a great way to show your kids how to perform a basic task such as raising your hand
Students, with assistance, can find images of kids raising their hand in class. Students and teacher can assemble the images and even take a photo of the child performing the task, and compile them into an Animoto video.
This could work with various life skills
i. Crossing the street
ii. Washing your hands
iii. Brushing your teeth
Again, this is another practical, easy to use application that every teacher and student can use. I hope this idea has helped to bring technology into your classroom and look forward to hearing how you are using Animoto in your classroom!
Let this page download while I ate a sandwich, and did some ot other stuff to let them come in. Started this note, and Hamlet finally came in. It ran just a few seconds for all that waiting. I am on dial-up, so for a school that is not in an area where the kids can all have fast connection, this won't be very effective. The large animoto is still coming in, very choppy. I don't think I'll wait for it all. Very hard to use on dial-up.
I had my students use Animoto to create movie trailers for novels last year. It was great and they loved it. It took me a while to get my educator account, but it was worth the wait. I have shared this site with many colleagues. I will definitely use Animoto again this year. Thanks for the movie poster idea. I will also add this as part of their assignment.
I love Animoto! They recently upgraded it as well to include video clips which makes it even more dynamic. Here is one I have made for my online learning space for my students, to introduce Geography this week.