Tag Archives: Video

Animoto

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Say goodbye to boring old slideshows with Animoto. Animoto takes your images, adds music and turns them all into a slick professional style video.

Animoto home

Animoto home

You can upload images from your computer, or select those already stored on Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, SmugMug and Facebook. You can add text and then you can select music from Animoto’s collection or upload your own from your computer. Images can be reordered at any time and text can be edited. Selected pictures can be ‘spotlighted’. When uploading music from your own source, you are reminded to check that you have the right to do so. If you decide to use a song from Animoto’s collection, the songs are arranged by genres and you can listen to a sample before you decide to select it or not. Before you know it, your images are presented in an engaging way, set to a rocking track.

Educational case studies

Educational case studies

 Animoto has a special ‘Education’ section, where educators can sign up and give students an access code. This enables students to upload videos to Animoto, purely for the class (or whoever is given the code) to see.

As per most Web 2.0 tools, Animoto basic is free, but there are upgrade options for people who want to make longer videos, burn videos to DVD and so on. For most of us, the basic package will suffice as it enables the user to get an embed or copy code for embedding into blogs and wikis or copying to a multitude of sites. The best thing about Animoto is that is is very easy to use. The site is extremely well designed and intuitive, making it a pleasure to use.

Have a look at this video, which was literally produced in ten minutes. Finalised videos can be uploaded to YouTube, as well as embedded in blogs and other websites.

 

Diigo

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Diigo (pronounced Deego) is a Web 2.0 tool that lets users bookmark, highlight  and add sticky notes to web pages. You can add and share (or not share if you don’t want to) annotations and get recommendations from other users. You are able to publish easily from Diigo to your blog or email and all references will automatically appear. That’s a huge bonus in this day of plagiarism. Diigo even call their tools ‘the best companion for online research’ and that’s a big call. Is it warranted?

Diigo

Diigo

The Diigo blog states ‘We are happy to announce the release of Diigo Educator Accounts, a suite of features that makes it incredibly easy for teachers to get their entire class of students or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful web annotation and social bookmarking technology.’ You do have to apply to Diigo for an educator account upgrade and it can take up to 48 hours for them to process your application (you have to fill out how/why you want to use Diigo in your school).

Diigo has to be downloaded to your toolbar, but it is a very quick process. Diigo says, ‘Once approved for a Diigo Educator Account:

  • A teacher can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
  • Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
  • To protect the privacy of students, student accounts have special settings which only allow their teachers and classmates to contact them and access their personal profile information.
  • Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.’

Sounds like it’s worth a look and a trial with a class. Anything that helps students research and acknowledge sources is worth pursuing. Have a look at the video that explains how Diigo works: How to use Diigo. And thanks to John Pearce of Salty Solutions for this guide to Diigo.