Animoto is certainly not a new tool – it’s been around for several years. What they’ve done more recently is release “Animoto for Education”, essentially providing some of their premium features for free to registered education users.
What is Animoto? It’s a program to create videos where many of the “cool factor” animations are done for you. You provide the pictures and audio and the software mixes it into a video with effects and transitions.
How would I use it? I could see where it would be a relatively easy way to engage students as a new topic is introduced. I could also see where a brief video could be used as a writing prompt. Students could also create their own videos as part of a presentation for an assignment. Promotional videos for school events and student-created public service announcements could be created as well.
Some might argue that Animoto is taking all of the creativity out of the hands of the end-user. That’s true to some extent, which is why this tool may not be best utilized in a course where students are being taught the intricate details of video editing. In most cases, however, the focus should be on the content of a presentation. Students could focus on the inclusion of the most appropriate pictures, audio and accompanying text.
I would compare it to the evolution of “teacher web pages”. Years ago, teachers were instructed on specific web-editing tools. We thought that every teacher would need to become a web author and expert in HTML. There’s still a place for that in specialized cases and coursework, but most teachers want the simplest way to share information quickly. As a result, WYSIWYG editors and content management solutions with built-in editors have become common.
I’ve heard districts discuss the use of Animoto in limited cases. At the very least, it belongs somewhere on that list of tools that districts might at least consider adopting to accentuate the classroom experience.