KimProbable

The blank page taunted me.

I needed to write a narrative story and I have heard that you should write about something that you know. Hmmm… what do I know well?

Then it came to me as a flash of lightning. In my Moodle course I have a page waiting to be filled called About the Instructor. I thought that this could be a way to introduce myself to my students and add another feature to my course.

I decided that I would write about myself. I do know the subject matter well. At least I hope I do.

The next step was to decide on a Web 2.0 tool. I had heard about Animoto from a colleague so I wanted to check it out. I created an account and started to explore.

Animoto wanted only pictures and text. Oh! O.k., I’ll go with it. I can use picture with text but not together. O.k. I’ll go with it. Let’s start adding some text and some pictures from my computer. Wow! Animoto has music included that is not Photo Story synthesizer. Love it!

So here was my first attempt.

Kim’s First Animoto Attempt

FAIL! Pretty good but not to the standard I wanted.

I needed to go back to the storyboard. What did I want to include? What did I want to highlight? How could I create pictures so that the University logos to show up in Animoto?

So I brainstormed a few more things that I am. Selected a few more photos from my computer and looked for a few that weren’t. (Ug. I didn’t realize how many photos I have in iPhoto.) I created jpegs for the University logos in PowerPoint.

Upload, type, rearrange, delete, upload, type, rearrange and repeat. Here is my second attempt.

Kim’s Second Attempt Animoto

It was not a whale. But there was still a tweak I needed to do. What happened to my team photo?

I never did figure out what happened. But I added another photo and it worked. No idea how that worked but I did have success. Here is my final video.

This is an awesome program. The students that I am developing the course for are grade 11 Students. They are above Animoto’s magic age of thirteen. I wouldn’t be able to ask the students to create an account (Divisional Policy) but they could if they so choose.

For those students who are under the age of thirteen, we could use teacher accounts. I wonder how many students you can have log in simultaneously? Bandwidth considerations? Will I take down an elementary school with too many students at one time? Add these to the questions to ask when I get back to work in the fall.

This tool was very intuitive and easy to learn. I think students would be highly motivated to use it because it was easy. The tough part will be to teach them how to use it effectively. But that is what I am there to do. Introduce the tool and teach them how to tell a story.