(I tried embedding, but WordPress keeps changing it to this link to the video instead.)
I examined both Dumpr and 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story, and then decided upon trying Animoto. The website author advocates planning your story and then choosing a tool that’s most appropriate for your situation. I had pictures of my dog and an overall message in mind. I created a 30 second (free) story with Animoto, a video storytelling application that creates a polished looking video with little effort. The user chooses the theme, images, and text slide content. Images can be uploaded or accessed through social media. I chose this application because I had seen others make such videos and was impressed with the quality. The application provided me with free to use background music, so that was appealing as well.
My product is meant to convey the sentiment that my dog is exuberant about life in treating every moment like an adventure. I hoped to implicitly suggest that we could learn from her enthusiasm.
In addition to the basic features mentioned above, the application has some fine tuning affordances as well. For instance, you can set a ‘featured’ image or text slide. You are able to add text slides between the images. While preparing the video, you can quickly preview it in low resolution. Once the video is rendered, it can be embedded or shared in multiple ways.
There are a few drawbacks. You must pay a subscription to make videos that are longer than 30 seconds. You cannot put text on the images directly. It’s not possible to specifically coordinate the music with the images. It is, however, very easy to use which will outweigh the drawbacks for most.
Thanks for sharing about Animoto! It does definitely create a nicely polished final product and it can include multiple forms of representation-text and visual. It is disappointing though that without a membership the videos are limited to 30 sec. Greta video about Buffy!
I think that I would be willing to pay for this product if I had a purpose, i.e. memories video of some sort. Thanks.
Hi Kim,
I used Animoto in another course and liked the ease of inserting pictures and that you could preview the video before rendering it. I also think that having a range of music to pick from is a good feature. One disadvantage (other than having to pay for videos over 30 seconds) was that it didn’t allow you to edit the music to fit with the pictures. All in all, I liked the ease of it and could see students using it to tell a story using pictures and music.
Good job on your product!
Lisa