Multimedia tools

Before I taught Math, I was the Social Studies resource teacher for World Geography.  I loved using Animoto for my class! Asia has so many countries to cover, so I would assign each student a country and gave them the option of creating a power point, a travel brochure or an Animoto video.  At first most students were reluctant to use Animoto as it was unfamiliar to them. When they saw the gorgeous videos that their classmates produced, their attitudes quickly changed.  The videos with their music and effects were much more interesting to watch than a power point that someone read in front of the class.  The engagement that Animoto produced was amazing to see.  Students who traditionally cared little about quality of work, were putting in lots of effort because they new the result would be something that they would be proud to show the class.

I used the tools on Picnik to make a collage for the introduction to my video.  I also added text to several of my photos. This was not my first exposure to Picnik.  I am an amateur photographer, and Picnik is my go to site for re-touching my pictures.  In fact, I did my twins Senior pictures using Picnik.  I think I have used every tool that Picnik has to offer and I find it very easy to use.  When I first started editing my own photos, I tried using Photoshop.  Although it is more sophisticated, I found it much more cumbersome to use.  With a little creativity, I can do everything that I want to do with Picnik in about half of the time. I had not considered using Picnik in the classroom.  After using it to edit some of my images for Animoto, I can see that students would love using this tool to create their own projects.