Educational Value of Animoto

Animoto allows you to create short videos or photo collages set to music about a particular theme. Animoto is "flashier" than a tradition powerpoint slide. It is limited in length to 30 seconds so choices of images need to be specific as the video needs to convey the project theme in a short time frame. Animoto is a great tool to engage the students of today who have a quest for instant gratification and do not like to sit through a long presentation or lecture. Animoto allows you to personalize their videos through choices in music tracks, themes, and selection of photos surrounding their topic theme.

My video below, focuses on our WebQuest on Engineering Design. This video is an introduction to our WebQuest assignment to get you excited to brainstorm everyday problems and solutions. We will use this as our jumping off point for our classroom brainstorming session. After watching my animoto video think about how you might create an Animoto video or other short video about the theme of your engineering design project.

 
Engineering Design

Student Assignment: Student Shark Tank
Do you have what it takes to impress the "sharks"? Create a 30 second animoto video to pitch your project idea. Think about using PicMonkey to create images for your Animoto video.

SOURCES
www.animoto.com
www.pickmonkey.com
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/using-animoto-technology-integration-activities.shtml
http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/bringing-lessons-life-with-30885.html

Educational Value of Wordle

A wordle or a “world cloud” is a visual representation of task with the most common words weighted or amplified. Wordles transforms a group of words into a graphical representation.  It can be used to depict the most common responses to a survey or as a representation of the most commonly used words in a paragraph. They can be used to define patterns in data that might otherwise be missed if reading a list. Students can use wordles to edit papers, by seeing the most commonly used phrases or words in their writing or for remembering vocabulary. Wordles can be used in brainstorming to focus ideas. Wordles allow students the choices of layout, colors and fonts so they can be personalized.  However, wordles should be used of every application. Before inputting text or data into a wordless it should first be proofed or edited, otherwise the wordle results might be taken out of context. Additionally, words should be consistently uppercase or lowercase and the list should be individual words rather than phrases.