Help! I’ve been bitten by the Animoto bug!

Wow! A lot of the tools we have learned about in EDES 501 have been relatively new to me. Prior to the course, I may have heard of them, maybe even dabbled in them, but I was basically a novice with all of them. But now, Animoto? What is that?

CrunchBase details that “Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Using their patent-pending Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor & director, the resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.”

Doesn’t it sound great?


My Exploration

As I often do while at my computer, I quickly “checked in” with Facebook one day and I noticed that a fellow classmate, Kelly, had uploaded an Animoto video onto her page. It was fabulous! That was all I needed to help me select which multimedia sharing tool I would explore this week! -- I decided to venture to Animoto. With ease, I signed up and watched a 60 second “how to” video – would it be as easy as promised?

I chose 19 pictures to upload. (It turns out that was too many for a short video, but they did warn me!) After deleting some pictures, I went ahead and perused the music selections. I spent a lot of time listening to the various choices, but eventually found one. After filling in some information for the video, one more mouse click and I was done. I just needed to wait.

Before I knew it, I had the video e-mailed to me and another copy in my Animoto account. I had created an adorable 30-second video of my three-year old son playing with a large stick he had found on a family picnic earlier this month.

Wow! It really was so simple! I got carried away and made another – wouldn’t want to leave a child out! I made one of my five-month old daughter trying food (I use that term loosely) for the first time. For some reason, my second video took a long time to be created. My first video was created by Animoto in just minutes, but as I watched minutes turning into hours, I started exploring. My video was listed in my account, but said it was “queued”. I poked around in the FAQs and found that, just like my first video, they should only take three minutes to be created. I sent off an e-mail and moved on to other things… should I admit that I made a third one? And, yes, it was also of my children!

Well, I am not sure if my request showed up at Animoto at a busy time, or exactly what happened, but my video was sent to me a couple hours later. I also received a reply to my e-mail asking a few questions and saying they’d look into it for me – wow, service!

As I am sure you can ascertain, I was hooked! I e-mailed my adorable videos to my family and I (very easily) added them to my Facebook profile. I even went so far as to call my girlfriend (fellow educator) in Alberta and DEMAND she check out Animoto. Within hours, she’d sent me her video and I noticed that another friend on Facebook had created one of her son too! Soooooo contagious!

Have you been bitten yet?

I felt so proud of MY accomplishments for the afternoon, but then I started to wonder about the actual accomplishment. What had I done? (Emphasis on “I”) I only picked out a handful of pictures and a song (from a provided sampling) and clicked my mouse! I tossed any misgivings aside when I read Joyce Valenza’s article in the School Library Journal. “Some … argue that Animoto doesn’t inspire a lot of creativity or higher order thinking, partly because the program does so much of the creative work, the animation choices, the transitions. I argue, we have other tools for deeper thought and sophisticated movie making”. Harrison Hoffman of CNET News wrote in his Web Services Report blog, “Can Animoto make you the next Spielberg? Well, probably not, but Animoto is definitely a slick, fun, easy way to compile your photos into energetic videos”. Exactly! While I may not have labored over the creative details of my finished product – I had played a role in the creation of the videos and I felt good about that!

So, why stop at three Animoto videos? Keep going… (Are you sensing my level of excitement here!) I felt that Animoto would be a fabulous tool for promoting an idea, event, place, etc. I decided to make a promotional-style video for reading. I used a Creative Commons (Attribution License) search in Flickr to find a variety of pictures of people reading. I saved them to my favorites and had hoped that I would be able to request them through Animoto, but only my photostream was available. My workaround to this was to save the images to my desktop and then upload them into Animoto. I felt comfortable enough by this time to try a few of the techniques on this video. I added text and utilized the “spotlight” feature to emphasize three pictures I particularly liked. As with the others, I used music available on Animoto. My video was created quickly and I was very pleased with the results.

(As an aside, I am concerned that I still have not followed the Creative Commons Attribution License because I have not credited each picture’s photographer somehow. Anyone out there know -- Have I broken this license? And if so, any recommendations for rectifying this error?)


Implications for Teaching & Library

Promotion - The 30 second, quick styling of the videos work perfectly for promotion! In a few minutes I was able to create a short, fun video to promote reading. (I also made one to promote Winnipeg on Norene’s wiki!) This promotion style video could be created for anything… specific schools, events, new books, new library programs, etc. The videos could be shared on a school website, wiki, or whatever other webspaces are maintained by the school/library/educator.

Ease of Use – This tool is so incredibly painless to use that even young children would be able to utilize this tool with ease! A lot of teaching time would not need to be spent on the tool itself.

Sense of Accomplishment – I was so excited by my videos – imagine how a child would feel! The sense of accomplishment one feels is linked directly with how easy the tool is to use.

Generate Excitement! – I can’t think of a better way to grab students’ attention, than with a “music video”. Even the dullest of subjects might become interesting! Definitely appealing to your audience!

The Animoto for Education website has a “case studies” section that allows you to view a variety of videos made for education, including a video against bullying made by a fourth grader, a video created by a science teacher that explains the students’ science video assignment, an explanation of a concept like the creation of the periodic table, and a video with the letters of the alphabet. Something for everyone!

I recently joined the Ning “Classroom 2.0” (foreshadowing to next blog post!) and searched for Animoto in the forums. There is quite the buzz over this great tool! One post in particular, by Andrew Marcinek, caught my eye. He lists a number of creative uses of Animoto for educators, including making a novel “movie trailer”. What a fabulous use of the tool in the library!


What’s Next?

I have been bitten so badly that I am considering purchasing an “All-Access Pass” ($30US) to enable me to create an unlimited number of longer videos (up to 10 minutes). They are downloadable. At minimum, I’d like to pay ($3US) and try my hand at creating a longer video. Would it be just as simple?

I read in a Classroom 2.0 (Ning) forum, that teachers can apply to receive a free “classroom code” that will provide each student with an All-Access pass and the students’ Animoto videos can also be downloaded. This is definitely worth exploring further!

I would also like to continue to play with Animoto and the tools. I might experiment with the edit feature, adding music from my own collection, or simply doing a “remix” to see the different results!

I can’t wait to share this tool with my school – colleagues, administration, and students!

Like a kid in a candy shop, I also want to check out other exciting multimedia tools too. For example, I took a peek at VoiceThreads and I am very intrigued. It looks like such a fabulous tool with virtually limitless possibilities for education! …will I be bitten by another bug?

For some fabulous inspiration, check out Mr. McDonald’s classroom blog. It is a fabulous example of using web 2.0 tool, including Animoto and VoiceThreads!


Got to go make more videos now! …Got Animoto?