1.  Can be accessed from any computer with Internet access.

2.  Although it won’t take video, it creatively displays photos, so you don’t even notice.

3.  Only allows small amount of text per slide. (Typically, students like to create glorified Powerpoint slides – so this keeps them from loading a slide with a ton of text.)

4.  Provides music – and actually pretty good music.  According to our students, the selection is much better than what we have found from other royalty free sites – less synthesizers for sure.

5.  Transition provided.

6.  Easy to finalize and share. 

7.  Seamless way to set up an educational account and get students on the site with all-access.  See education information before creating a log on. 

For Africa Studies project, classes used Animoto for the first time.  First, students located information about serious issues affecting the countries of Africa.  Then, students searched for organizations that attempt to impact those issues positively.  Students reviewed their notes and determined how to communicate those ideas in Animoto. 

To find images, students could access unitedstreaming.com or the provided public domain images links.  Many students also emailed the organizations and asked for permission to use their images.  (That was probably the most eye-opening moment for many -  an organization could refuse to give permission.  Thankfully, many organizations did respond positively.  One organization was so impressed by the final product that they asked to post the video on their website.)

Handout for Animoto

Example Animoto (For complete class list of examples, go to the following wiki.)

We recently purchased the education license of Voicethread.  It makes it easier to manage for the most part.  Recently, they added a feature that will be very nice for massive import of students.

Import – you can import a csv file (excel) of student’s names.  To add the students to a “class” or group as they call it, you have to individually select a student to join the group.  However, this can be quite cumbersome, so they made it where students can join a group by inputting a teacher code.  This will drop the students name into the group. 

Now, as we are beginning to use voicethread more often, I try to find good examples.  Often, I find basically reports of sorts without the discussion.  I believe the exciting thing about voicethread is the collaboration aspect – where students, teachers, parents, city, and global citizens can access and comment to create a good discussion. 

How do we connect through voicethread? Should we just do a search and locate a voicethread we want to comment?

How do we provide a “global” aspect with students – so other people around the world can comment on their voicethread?

I have a teacher wanting to connect her U.S. History students with another U.S. History class in a different part of the country.  How do we go about it?

http://necclibrarians08.wikispaces.com/