Teachers may register at Animoto and create their own accounts. Educators are also given a promo code to use that will enable them to use Animoto with full access rights for a year, AND they can let their students create their own accounts for free (after one year, free accounts are still available but with limited picture uploads and video lengths). Please see me for a generic educator’s code if interested.
Can animoto videos be used for instruction? Absolutely! This can be utilized to promote events and highlight student achievement, but they also can be created to review key concepts or to introduce essential information in a unique, appealing visual format.
You can create powerpoint slides, open them with Microsoft paint, and resave them as jpg files. These can also be uploaded and created into a video.
Imagine students creating their own videos for vocabulary review!
The site is very user-friendly and has a music library ready for users to select the song they want.
Here are a few teachers’ examples from other subject content areas:
The Brothers’ War: Civil War in Verse by J. Patrick Lewis
This book of poems is truly amazing. J. Patrick Lewis writes eloquently, using emotionally loaded words and imagery, to speak in the voices of various Civl War participants – both real and imagined. What I found ironic about this text is the juxtaposition of the flowing, beautiful language and the subsequent horror it was detailing. Some examples of Lewis’s powerful imagery included in The Brothers’ War are the “sickle moon” revealed during the bloody aftermath of the Battle of Seven Pines, the voice of a hospitalized Confederate soldier – “giving up the ghost To welcome Mr. Death,” a runaway slave describing his “bullwhip-long odds” of making it to freedom - ”a land as alien as space.”
The Brothers’ War also includes Civil War photographs, adding visual interest to the events of the Civil War and the text. This book is a useful resource in both Language Arts and Social Studies classes.
Podcasts of letters - written from the point of view of a concerned father and a son. The son is a Confederate Prisoner of War. He writes his letter home on his way to a Union prison.
Letter from Home – Father to Son
Recording – Charles Barnett, Language Arts teacher
Google Earth Lit Trip – View the event locations included in this book – along with supplementary information about the Civil War:
Select icon
*You must have Google Earth installed on your computer to view this file.
Viewing – Unzip folder contents AND extract all files. Then select the .kml document. This should open automatically in Google Earth. Under My Places, Temporary Files, you can select the Civil War Lit Trip .kmz file to view the tour. In order to read the content saved under each location and to view and hear media files, pause the tour and manually click on each underlined placemark.
Chad Crews visited our school February 27th. He performed a show titled “Authors of Mystery and Horror.” Chad used magic to captivate our student audience and to encourage everyone to read stories by famous classical authors, such as Poe, Stoker, and Doyle. He did a great job! Our students were very entertained. Here’s an excerpt of his performance:
Poetry Alive is a performance group based out of Asheville, NC. They use acting to help students become engaged with the text – specifically, poetry. They truly are a phenomenal group. Poetry Alive presented to our school on March 27th. Our students had a great time participating in the poetry re-enactments! This podcast is an excerpt from the 7th grade presentation. A special thanks to our two engaging performers – L’Tanya and Brad!
Welcome to WDRH Radio! Check out the podcasts of Mrs. Bohnenberger’s 2nd and 6th period students. They researched World War II and wrote and enacted an old time radio broadcast based on their research. The podcasts contain some sound effects.
Ms.Austin’s students recently researched a notable African-American. Using the information they learned, students wrote a Bio Poem and an “I Am” poem. Check out the podcast of everyone reading their poems.
Here’s a recording of The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq by Jeanette Winters. the_librarian_of_basra.mp3 – read with a nice, Southern accent for your listening pleasure
