Plants in Our World- Animoto Video

When using Animoto there were a couple of things that I really enjoyed and some things that I really don't like about using it. One that I like is that the program transitions and makes your project look snazzy without you prompting it to do so. One thing that I didn't like as much was that in order to have text ON your pictures, you had to first edit them in Picnik. Another thing that I like about Photostory versus Animoto was that in Photostory there are many more opportunities to preview your project before it finally gets put together.
I messed around a little with freeplaymusic, but chose not to use it in my Animoto video. I had trouble getting the files to load and play on my computer. It is a good resource for kids when they are adding music to their presentations, as it is free and will not infringe on copyright laws.
Finally, I liked using Picnik- I enjoyed enhancing my pictures that I found online and adding text. I did this to several pictures in my movie. Before I created my movie, when I was just looking at Picnik, I took a staff picture from last year when we all played staff volleyball together and enhanced it so that only our shirts were red (school color) and the rest was black and white. I thought those types of features were really neat.
I would be willing to use Animoto in the classroom for a variety of things. One thing I think it would be good for is introducing new units. By putting together pictures and music it's like a preview before the movies in the theater. I also think kids would enjoy making the free 30 second ones about themselves as something to start the year with, so we could learn more about each other. Finally, I do a 6th grade recognition video with pictures from the entire year, and this would be a fast and easy way to do that. I think all of these tools we learned about and used this week are beneficial and fun and are things I will pass along to colleagues and my students.