Week 13--Slide Sharing--Animoto

In the past, I have created several slide shows on PowerPoint and recently experimented with Windows Movie Maker. But I had never tried any of the web-based slide sharing software.

I chose to use Animoto. Setting up an account in Animoto was simple. The first thing I did was import some photos that I had uploaded to Facebook. This feature was nice because I did not have to take time to upload anything from my computer and the process was fairly quick. Since I was using the free version of Animoto and you are limited to videos that are 30 seconds, I had to narrow down the number of pictures I was using--I just used the delete feature.

Next, I added music. Animoto has a selection of song clips that you can choose from. Finally, I added a title slide and a credits slide, clicked finish, and waited for my video to be processed.

Then, I wanted to add my slide show to my blog. I finally figured out how to do this, and there is a link to the video below.

I found that the free version of Animoto is very limited as to what you can do with it. If I were to create slide shows in the future, I would probably opt to continue using PowerPoint or Movie Maker as I have access to the full features of both and would not have to pay a subscription fee.

Wildflowers

Another Monday

I finished grading the 5th graders' explorer projects. They did a really good job on their posters and presentations, but struggled with the bibliography. Maybe easybib.com will help with that problem.

The 3rd grade has been working on a project about the local community for several weeks. Today we used Movie Maker to begin our final presentations. The project is called the 8 Wonders of LaCygne--patterned after the 8 Wonders of Kansas. The students interviewed several people from the community in regard to the art, architecture, commerce, cuisine, customs, geography, history, and people of the area. If I can ever get all the bugs worked out of things, maybe they can get their presentations done! Anybody know anything about converting video from a Flipcam so it can be imported into Movie Maker?

At LaCygne, we are in the middle of our Book Fair. Lots of neat titles to choose from. I got copies of 3 books about the library. One is called Library Lion. I read it to the kindergarten class and had them predict what was going to happen. They really enjoyed it and I highly recommend it!