Animoto/Free Play Music/Picnik

I have actually known about Animoto for about four months now. However, I have never used it. I am so glad that I was asked to complete a project using it because it is fantastic. I couldn't believe how easy it was to use. It was also exceptionally fast which is great. Now that I am familiar with it I have already created an Animoto video of my son, and I will be creating some videos for my class as well. I can really use these videos in an educational way that I think will motivate my students to work to the best of their ability. I showed my teaching partners Animoto and told them that I think we should use it for our fifth grade graduation slide show. They were extremely excited when they saw how easy it was. To have something that creates all the transitions for you is excellent. They have both applied for a teacher account and have begun using Animoto for their classroom as well.

As for Free Play Music, I am very excited as well. Since I teach writing to three different classes there are so many times when my students want some soothing music playing while they are writing. Most websites that play music are blocked in my school and I don't really have these types of CD's in my collection. With this site, I have access to thousands of great song choices for my students to listen to as they write. I think they will really enjoy this site. It is so easy to navigate through and I can get exactly what I want but searching for it. I love how easy it is to upload to my iTunes library. I have actually spent some time uploading songs that I can use and am thrilled to do so.

Picnik is also a great site to have access to. I don't know how often I will use it but it is nice knowing that it is a free option for me. I do think that students would enjoy taking pictures with digital cameras and learning how easily they can edit these photos. I know there are many things that I didn't dip into that can be done using Picnik. My thoughts on how often I use it may change the more familiar I become with how it works.

In my Animoto slide show I used Picnik for two different photos. I really played around a lot with the photos to try and navigate the site and learn as much as I could. When I thought I was done playing around with it I noticed I could have done so much more (backgrounds, frames, etc). In the photos I used I played around with cropping them but didn't end up cropping anything out. The thing I changed the most was the exposure and the contrast of the picture. I also played around with the saturation and temperature. I couldn't really figure out why I would need to do those types of things with the pictures but learned you can really change focal points in the pictures. I loved the fact that it has a red eye function. I was able to add some text to one of my slides. I found that to be very valuable for an educational setting. I could easily label diagrams or do whatever I may to with this tool.

Overall, I loved all three things. Two of them were new to me and the one that I knew about is going to actually be utilized now.