Animoto

Animoto is a very interesting and easy to use tool which helps you organize your photos to make an interesting video. You can choose to insert some text, too. That can be useful if you need some explaining or if you create it as a language task.

Animoto is extremely easy to use. The first step is uploading photos and arranging them in the order you want to see them. The second step is choosing music to accompany the slides. What I like is the possibility to choose from a list with a number of different genres. If you prefer to upload from your computer, there is a reminder that you need to have right to use a piece of music, which is very useful because students sometimes forget about copyright. The final step is to decide on the title, description, how long you want to see each photo for and that's it. In fact, all the work is done for you - you just wait and see in a few minutes how your photos change shapes and are beautifully synchronised with music.

The only little detail that annoyed me for some time was the limit to a 30- second video if you have a free acount and then I learned how to solve the problem. I applied for Animoto Edu - Animoto for educators, where you can get full length videos for free. It's so much easier to express yourself when the time limit is not 30 seconds.

I showed my students what I had done with the photos of one of our lessons - a walk around our school to celebrate Earth Day. That day we all took photos of beautiful spring scenes around our school with the task to write or record comments in English.




My students loved the video, or so they told me. Next I wanted them to comment and to try and make their own.
I'm still waiting for some written comments in English but today I've seen the first Animoto made by one of the students:
Josip's Earth Day Animoto
It really made me happy.