…and one book to rule them all

Well, I don’t know if it is the one book to rule them all; however, here is an excellent resource.  It is a book dedicated to Web 2.0 technologies for educational purposes.  There are sections for elementary, administrators, ELL, and many more.  The best part about the book is it is a collaborations between a number of prominent education bloggers…and it is also free.  What free thing has ever been bad?  So, here is The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators (as I discovered from Richard Byrne’s excellent blog, Free Technology for Teachers)


The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators -

Zotero

Here is a recent write-up I did for a grad class about Zotero.  Zotero is a library-geek's dream tool.  At least I think it is.  I maybe a geek, but I am under-qualified to be a library geek.

1. Provide a general description of the site. 

                The site/service I reviewed is Zotero.  Zotero is a not a standard social networking site.  Its main purpose is to gather and collect research resources.  It is a bibliographic tool with a major focus on collecting information from scholarly articles.    

                Zotero works as a web browser add-on.  As a person searches and finds various resources on the Internet, Zotero can be used to capture these resources very easily.  On many researched-related sites like JSTOR, Zotero is integrated to gather all of the bibliographic information.  Zotero also works on numerous other websites, including Amazon.  Once the information is collected, it can easily produce bibliographies and many different formats (e.g., MLA, APA, etc.), as well as integrate as a citation managing application within Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer.  With Zotero, users can also attach notes and tags to documents.

                The social aspect of Zotero is that a user can create groups to share their collected information.  The groups have three different settings for privacy.  In the most open settings, any person can view the group’s resources and anyone can contribute.  In the most restrictive group setting, only members of the group can post and view the resources.

2. What do you like and dislike about the site and how could it be used? 

                What I like about Zotero is its single focus on managing scholarly resources and sharing them with others.  Zotero’s focus is on books, journal articles, and other resources for reference.  It integrates very nicely with Microsoft Word.  This makes it very easy to cite research in text, as well as inserting full reference lists.  It is very different from other social networking sites in that its social-ness is extremely limited to Zotero’s single function.  There are not any chat features, picture sharing, or Farmville within Zotero.  It is very focused.

I dislike some of the complicated features of Zotero.  It does take some time to learn.  I think that it was created from the perspective of a research librarian, so many of the features are comparable to traditional library searching, note taking, and cross-referencing.  I am sure that a person with a strong knowledge of library systems would find Zotero very easy to use.  My skills are more limited, so it has taken me some time to learn.

Overall, I think Zotero is an advanced tool that makes sense at the graduate or undergraduate level.  I think that it could be used in a high school setting, but I believe it would require a lot of support from the school’s library and media specialist.  That being said, it would be a perfect complimentary tool to use while learning about essential library research skills.

3. How could the site be used in a classroom setting?  (Make sure to identify an educational objective and curriculum area that the tool could be used in a distance education program.)

                I believe that Zotero could have two very important uses.  The first would be as the landing point for distance learning reference list.  Zotero utilizes a folder structure, so an instructor could create folders and subfolders of required and supplemental readings.  This could then be shared in a group format with the student.  There would be several benefits.  For the instructor, they could continue to modify and recycle the resource list from class to class.  If the resources were part of a system like JSTOR, full-text PDF articles would easily be available to the students.  This would probably be easier to manage in the long run than just using hyperlinks.  Another advantage would be that students and instructors would easily be able to cite and reference the material in any of their written activities without having to recreate the citation. 

                The second use of Zotero would be to collaborate on a group research project.  For example, if a group of students is working together to construct a research paper, proposal, etc., and they need to collect research articles to support their position, Zotero would be a great tool.  The students could independently collect articles and share among the group.  In addition to the bibliographic references, the group could also their notes on the various resources.

20 Things I Learned about Browsers & the Web

http://20thingsilearned.com/


I just saw this really nice online book that details many aspects of the Internet.  It is put together by the Google Chrome Team.  They cover some basic stuff within the book, like “what is the Internet”.  They also get into things like TCP/IP, CSS, XML, etc.  I just gave it a quick glance and it looks like they do a good job of not getting bogged down by the technical jargon.

The book is done very well and it looks beautiful.  There are great animations on many of the pages.  I want to resist my natural urge to print it and save a few trees; however, I did notice a button at the bottom-left corner of the screen just for printing.

Wuala–Basic Overview

A few years ago, I learned a hard lesson about computer backups.  I created a server from spare parts and loaded it with Ubuntu.  The main point of the server was to function as a file server.  I had a Terabyte drive filled with music, pictures, videos, and documents.  This included all of my stuff, as well as all of my wife’s stuff.
So one day I decided to clean things up on the file server.  I started deleting files and folders, renaming things, moving things around, etc.  Of course, the problem happened when I was within my wife’s folder.  I accidently deleted an entire folder filled with documents from my wife’s files.  The lesson I learned is that the default setup for a file server (Samba) does not have a recycle bin.  The files were gone.  I panicked.  I eventually was able to restore the most critical files, but some were completely lost.  I then learned a lot more about Samba and how to make a pseudo-recycle bin (another post).  I also started my never-ending search for backup software.
Eventually, I stumbled on Wuala.  Wuala is an application that you install on your computer and runs in the background.  Once you create an account, you can add files to your Wuala account and they are backed up to Wuala’s cloud storage (I am drastically oversimplifying the features because I want to get to how I use Wuala).
For free, Wuala gives you 2GB of online storage.  This is great, but it is also pretty standard when you look at other online storage solutions.  Wuala also recently added the ability to sync files on multiple computers.  This is also great, but is similar to other products like Dropbox and Microsoft’s Live Mesh (both are great services).  What makes Wuala unique is that it has a peer-to-peer feature that you can trade storage on your own computer for storage in the cloud.
So let me explain how this works for me.  On my Ubuntu server that is running all the time, I have designated that Wuala can have up to 100GB of storage.  Since I allocated this storage on my computer, it means that I can store 100GB of my own data into Wuala’s cloud storage.  Of course, the data is encrypted; I can’t access someone else’s data on my computer, and they can’t access my information.  The Wuala website indicates that this type of storage means faster upload and download time, and built-in redundancy.  They also indicate that there are numerous copies of the data, so you don’t have to worry if someone in Japan has their computer turned on in order to access/restore your data.
Since I trade storage, I have an online backup service for the low low cost of FREE.  I am cheap, this is a huge selling point.  I can access the data from any web browser, which is also a nice added feature.
Wuala’s sync feature is also something that I heavily utilize.  I have my school files synced across all of my computers, so I never have to search for the latest version of something I am working on.  I also have some personal files that are synced on some computers, but not the others.  This makes it very flexible for me since I want my school files everywhere, but I only want my personal documents on a few computers. 
This is an extremely brief overview of Wuala’s features, but it is really a great service.  There are additional features like file versioning and sharing.  If you have any computer that is on all the time (or even for a large chunk of the day), you should think about it.  You can also purchase storage if you are not comfortable with sharing your harddrive.  Regardless of the option, everyone should have some sort of offsite backup solution. 

Diigo

www.diigo.com

Diigo is a social bookmarking tool. “Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage, and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them” (From Wikipedia – Social Bookmarking). There are several features to social bookmarking that make it a useful tool, and there are several specific features of Diigo that make it particularly useful in education.
Core Features

The main feature of social bookmarking is not very social at all: Bookmarks are saved online instead of on an individual computer. Although there are tools that can synchronize bookmarks across different computers, tools like Diigo provide a central storage location of all of a person’s bookmarks. If you find a great link on your home computer, you don’t have to write it down or email it to yourself to get the link on your work computer. You just have to check you social bookmarking account.

Another feature of social bookmarks is that the number of bookmarks is virtually limitless. This may also be the case with traditional bookmarks within a web browser, but most people quickly run out of room on the screen. Regardless of how many folders you create, your bookmark list quickly consumes your entire page. Social bookmarking takes a different strategy to storing and retrieving bookmarks. Instead of organizing bookmarks by folder structure, social bookmarks are organized by tags.

Tags are one or two word descriptions of the web page you are bookmarking, and each bookmarked page can have multiple tags. For example, if you want to bookmark the PA Department of Education website, you might tag it with “PDE”, “regulation”, “legal”, “state”, or whatever else makes sense to you. Then when you want to find your bookmarks, you can search by the tags. So if you search for “legal”, you will see all of the bookmarks that you tagged with that term. You can also search by multiple tags, so you could search for “legal” and “ODR” to narrow your results further. The result of using tags and removing the limitations of traditional bookmarks mean that you can easily grow the number of bookmarked sites to well over 100, and yet easily find all of your sites. This has an effect of changing the way you think about bookmarks.
The Social Aspect

The social aspect of social bookmarking is that you can now share your bookmarks with other people (you are able to keep bookmarks private if you want). Some of the nice features of Diigo are that you can create groups to share bookmarks. You can control who can view the bookmarks, as well as who can add bookmarks. The other great features of Diigo are that you can highlight web pages and add sticky notes. These notes can be private, shared with a group, or open to everyone that has a Diigo account.

Programming Collective Intelligence

Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications by Toby Segaran

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Programming Collective Intelligence (Segaran, 2007) uses a multitude of examples to show how data can be combined and analyzed to produce results that are “more human.” The book intersperses text with Python programming snippets. The programming code allows someone to work through all of the examples discussed in the book. At times, some more advanced examples require additional library downloads, but everything in the book is accessible to the reader.

The book covers a wide range of topics related to data analysis. It begins with a simple algorithm that recommends movies based on your previous movie reviews and the movie reviews of others. Although this was the easiest task within the book, I felt that is was one of the most powerful examples. What is powerful about this chapter is that the mathematics behind the programming was very simple. I think this illustrates the power of the Internet and Web2.0 systems. Sometimes the analysis of the data is very easy.

I also think this chapter related to movie recommendations also points to some of the frailties of data mining. The results are only as good as the data that has been collected and analyzed. Thinking of my own personal experiences with movie and music websites that make recommendations, I know that we still have a long way to go to improve the accuracy of these systems. I think the algorithms behind the programming are sound, but I think we are missing some critical components in the collection of the data. There is something very personal about certain datasets that I believe we are still missing. I don’t doubt that we will eventually become more accurate, but I think we still need to find more indicators to include with the datasets.

I also think a powerful statement was made in Chapter 9 when the author stated that, “An important thing to take away from this chapter is that it’s rarely possible to throw a complex dataset at an algorithm and expect it to learn how to classify things accurately. Choosing the right algorithm and preprocessing the data appropriately is often required to get good results” (p. 197). This is a precursor to the chapter related to “Matchmaking” using advanced classification strategies. Throughout the chapter, Segaran talks about the raw data and discusses ways to restructure and normalize the data. I think this is important. For example, converting street address data to discern actual mileage difference between two points, and grouping interests into categories (e.g., snowboarding and skiing). Without this type of preprocessing, comparisons are limited.

Most reviews of this book focus on the fact that it is a balance between programming and mathematical computations. There is a great deal of code on almost every page, but there are little mathematical explanations in terms of formulas. For advanced mathematicians, most of the mathematics used in the book is probably already known, so the formulas may not be needed. In general, I would have liked to see some more theoretical discussions of the topics and perhaps the inclusion of more detailed information related to the mathematical formulas. I believe that this would make the process of applying examples in the book to other datasets a little easier.
Given my minimal programming experience and minimal mathematics experience, I found that the Python code made the book confusing at times. I was not interested in running the programs as I was reading the book, so I found myself trying too hard to decipher the code. If I focused on the text, I was fine. I did find the explanations, tables, and diagrams to be extremely interesting. I have never thought about the process behind search engine rankings, spam filters, or optimization used in recommending the best travel itinerary; however, the book did an excellent job explaining these concepts.

I think that the prospects of connecting datasets to mine data and produce “intelligent” results are particularly powerful. In my profession (K-12 education), I could see these concepts being used to analyze assessment data and make instructional decisions for individual students. I have already seen certain products that attempt this, but I have not seen anything that does a thorough job. Many schools currently assign students to remedial classes or activities to try to increase student performance. If a web application could model using decision tree logic as discussed in Chapter 7, schools could identify the student groups that need particular help in certain areas. I think this type of prescriptive-teacher would be very beneficial. Of course, all of this depends on the accuracy, specificity, and validity of the assessment tools. Education has wrestled with this concept for a long time.

My overall rating of this book is a 4.5 out of 5. Even though some of the concepts and programming were above my head, it caused me to rethink my pedestrian VBA projects and how I could use concepts within this book on future projects. For me, I will need to do much more research to learn and implement these concepts, but I do not think I was the intended audience for this book. I think the best audience for this book would be a programmer that has minimal experience with working with live Web 2.0 data. For a person with preexisting knowledge of programming, and a solid background in some advanced mathematics, I believe that this book would really open the doors to creating interactive websites or applications that use scraped data to enhance an end-user’s experience.




View all my reviews

Gapminder

Hans Rosling is a professor of international health in Sweden.  His background is in medicine and statistics.  He cofounded the Gapminder Foundation with some of his family members and developed a program called Trendalyzer.  The purpose of the software was to, “show major global development trends with animated statistics" (About Gapminder).   Trendalyzer’s purpose, “unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics” (History).  The data is presented in a sequence that allows patterns to be discerned over time.  In 2007, the Trendalyzer software was acquired by Google, but the tool remains at the Gapminder site.
The graphs display three different types of data.  In the graph below, the horizontal axis shows the average income per person per country.  The vertical axis shows the life expectancy in years per country.  The size of each circle represents the population for each country.  What makes the graphs unique is the Play button in the bottom left corner.  When you press play, the data becomes animated and you can see the circles move over time.  In the example below, you can view the change in income, life expectancy, and population of the course of the last century.

Uses in Education:

For a class discussing world cultures, Gapminder’s graphs are a great way to explore differences.  In the above example, it is very interesting to view how income impacts life expectancy, and to see the difference that across countries and continents.  This type of data would also be extremely useful in a class discussing world economics and politics.  A teacher could use one of Gapminder’s graphs to initiate a classroom discussion. 
The dataset available on Gapminder are numerous, and all of the data can be viewed and/or downloaded into an Excel format.  This would make it possible for students to perform further analysis on the same data.  The various datasets can also be combined in any way within the graphing display.  This makes it possible for students to view many different aspects of health, economy, education, and population.  For reports or projects, students could use the graphs to support their hypotheses. 
The data within the Gapminder database is expanding.  The website recently launched a section specifically for teachers.  Currently, the resources are limited, but there are some lesson guides available.  There is also a desktop version of the graphing application that allows people with limited Internet connectivity the ability to use the software.

Help and How-To:

I know that I am biased because of my personal affinity to statistical information, but Gapminder is a great balance between usability and ease.  When the graph is loaded within the web browser, there is a button that allows users to easily select data geared towards a specific line of inquiry.  If this is not enough, many of the elements of the graph can be tweaked or changed by clicking on them.  New datasets can be loaded on either axes, the lower and upper limit of circle size can be adjusted, and data can be grouped in various ways. 
There is a short video that explains using Gapminder graphs, and there is also a PDF document that illustrates the various graph functions.  Overall, there is not a lot of help, especially for students that may be unfamiliar with graphs.  They would need guidance to get them to the point that they could interact effectively with Gapminder.
Probably some of the most informative help on Gapminder and the usefulness of statistic is the videos of Hans Rosling.  He spoke at TED 7 separate times.  The following video illustrates his passion for the data, as well as some of the numerous insights that can occur from one or two different data combinations with Gapminder.

SoundCloud–Song #2

Here is another song on SoundCloud.  I really like the imbedded waveform it creates.  It seems like a nice visual.  On the SoundCloud website, you can also comment at specific times within the waveform view.  This makes it great to get feedback from others (e.g., ‘nice drum fill’ for music, or ‘good comment’ for an interview/presentation).
This song is something that I did a few years ago.  I am glad I took some more time to remix it, because it sounds better than the original.
My Time by witmerm

Lastpass

LastPass is a free password manager (premium version also available).  This sounds so unexciting, but it is a powerful tool.  I allows you to securely maintain all of your Internet passwords in one database.  The end result is that you can log into all of your websites by just remembering one master password.
LastPass is a browser plugin that installs very easily from the LastPass website.  It works on all major web browsers.  Once the plugin is installed, LastPass automatically recognizes websites you encounter that requires a username and password.  When you enter your username and password, LastPass asks you if you would like to remember the login details.  If so, LastPass stores the information in your ‘vault’ and you can now login with your single LastPass master password.
The following video briefly illustrates how LastPass works.

LastPass Instructions

Since there are so many cool Web2.0 tools, many people use the same username and login for numerous websites.  This is a bad idea from a security perspective.  If someone finds out your password on one site, they potentially have your password for all of your sites that use the same password.  By using one master password to access LastPass, you don’t have to remember numerous login information from various websites.
When you encounter a new website and your are required to create a password, LastPass typically automatically detects this and prompts you to use an automatically generated strong password.  If you use this feature, the end result is that you have a unique password for each website that is a long string of random characters, numbers, and symbols.

How secure is it?

This is a great question that I am sure people are thinking.  Just like any password, if you keep your master password written on a sticky on your laptop, then the answer is ‘not very secure’.  The security of the master password is critical.  It should be long, include numbers and symbols, and include lower- and upper-case letters.  It should also not be any word that is found within a dictionary.
The actual LastPass database that contains all of your website passwords is encrypted based on your password.  The bad news is that if you use your password, you are out of luck (LastPass does have a one time provision for this).  The good news is that no one is able to see your individual passwords without knowing your master password.  In an interview with one of the LastPass executives, it was made clear that not even LastPass employees could access your passwords, or anyone hacking their database (approximately minute 9:00)
.LastPass Interview by user4752733

Use in an educational environment:

Since more and more teachers and students are creating accounts online, managing passwords becomes a practical issue.  I personally think that managing passwords also becomes one of those core computer/technology skills that we need to instruct, just like teaching how to add an attachment to an email.  The result is that teachers and staff become more aware of security and their online data and profiles are less likely to be compromised.
If everyone within a school district used LastPass, the number of calls to the tech department to reset passwords would be drastically reduced.  Additionally, the tech department would not need to reset numerous passwords when a teacher’s index card full of passwords mysteriously disappears.  Students would also not have the same phenomenon of losing their notebook with all of their passwords and finding out that a peer hacked into their accounts.  
Probably the biggest difficulty would be to convince everyone to use LastPass.  Many people already have different systems (mental, pencil/paper, etc.) for remembering passwords.  To successfully use LastPass, all of these passwords should be entered into LastPass.  If LastPass is installed, the user is prompted if they would like to add the password to LastPass each time a new website login in encountered.  However, some people may continue to use other methods.

How-to Material:

The LastPass support website has many materials geared for installing, using, and troubleshooting LastPass.  This includes FAQs and screencasts.  There is also a user forum to discuss various issues.

Other Features:

LastPass has additional features that make it useful.  It is a cloud-based system, so it is not tied to one computer.  This makes it very useful in a school setting.  There is also an ability to add secure notes.  This could be credit card numbers, bank accounts, or a teacher’s PPID.  LastPass also has security test that tests the overall security of your accounts passwords.  This is very useful if you are interested in the security of your existing accounts.

Evernote

What is it?

The simplistic explanation of Evernote is that it is a notetaking application that is comparable to Microsoft’s OneNote. However, Evernote goes beyond a mere replacement for a pad of lined yellow paper. Evernote can be used as a tool to replace a notepad, but there are also other things you can do with Evernote.

The basic setup for Evernote is a web-based application like many other Web 2.0 tools. You can also download a program onto your computer to run Evernote outside of a web browser. Both Evernote and the application are free, but Evernote also offers a paid service. The paid version of Evernote increases the amount of information that you can transfer to and from your account. Although Evernote is a great service and they deserve money for their hard work on a great tool, the free account has enough features that should keep most people happy.

Evernote is organized like a cross between an email program and a social bookmarking site. Each note that you create can be organized into various folders (like an email program), and each note can have any number of tags (like a social bookmarking site). This makes organization very convenient and finding notes very easy. You can search by tags, you can search by text, or you can navigate through various folders to find what you need. The truncated image below shows how the desktop application is structured. Folders and searchable tags are on the far left column, the individual notes are viewable in the middle, and the actual notes are on the right. I think this is very similar to look and feel of Microsoft Outlook.

The actual note editing capabilities are comparable to Internet-based WYSIWYG editors like those found within blogs, wikis, etc. This basically means that you are able to do bulleted lists, bold, underline, and other simplistic text formatting.

Besides inserting text-based notes, you can insert other content within Evernote. You can insert an “Ink Note”, which would be great if you have a tablet PC.

You can also insert pictures, screenshots, and webcam images. I think this really extends Evernote into a scrapbook/notebook hybrid. Since everything can be tagged and organized into folders, you can really use Evernote for a variety of purposes.

One of the coolest features of Evernote is that it has OCR (optical character recognition) for pictures. This means that if you take a picture of a whiteboard or a napkin filled with notes, Evernote will read the words and add them to the searchable index. In the picture above, I could search for the word “hey” and my horrible drawing will appear since Evernote recognizes my drawing as words.

Another cool feature is that notes and folders can be shared with other Evernote users. This also extends Evernote beyond the yellow pad. Evernote can be used as a collaborative research tool, or as a project management tools

As I said previously, you can use Evernote from within your web browser or you can download the application. There are also versions of Evernote for a variety of smartphones. Even if you don’t have the app installed, Evernote gives you an email address to automatically add notes to your data. When you send images to the your Evernote email address, they are automatically added to your notebook.

Tutorials:

One benefit of Evernote offering a paid premium service is that the website has many ideas for using Evernote and video tutorials. It is the perfect place to go for help. There is also a User Guide, FAQ, and a user forum.

Challenges:

As with any tool, the initial challenge will be to create accounts and install the application (if used). Beyond the normal hurdles, I think the biggest challenge with Evernote is that the tool does not lead to increased notetaking skills and organization. Organizational skills need to be directly taught. For a student that can’t keep a folder or binder organized, Evernote will not automatically help.

I am personally trying to get rid of my notepad and I am using Evernote. However, I am not an organized person. I am struggling at times with what constitutes a folder, and what determines if I need another note versus adding an item to a note. These are the same issues I have when using my yellow notepad. My greatest challenge is to overcome my organizational incompetence. People using Evernote in an educational environment or a work environment will need to keep this in mind.

Educational Objectives, Curricular Areas, and Lesson Ideas:

Evernote is a versatile tool that could be used in a variety of curricular areas. As a collaborative tool, Evernote could be used as a common location to gather resources for a group project. It could also be used as a tool to manage workflow of a group project since Evernote can easily be setup as a “To Do'” checklist. This could be for students, or for staff. If it is a student project, teachers could monitor group progress by viewing the shared notes created by the group.

Some districts directly integrate notetaking skills within the curriculum. This is a great idea because notetaking is not an innate ability to everyone. Evernote would be a natural match during these curricular activities. If schools do not directly teach study skills, Evernote could be an introduction to this concept.

MS Office in Education Blog

Microsoft (love them or hate them) has done some very cool things in the past few years. I am not talking about Windows 7 or Office 2010, I am talking about all the freebies they have created. Things like Skydrive (25GB of free online storage) and Live Mesh (automatic Dropbox-like syncing-5Gb free) are my personal favorites.
They have now started a new blog called Office in Education. I don't doubt that the blog will try to entice people to purchase Microsoft products, but that is OK in my mind. I am really interested in how Microsoft suggests educators and students use some of their new tools, like Office Live and Windows Live Essentials.

Soundcloud

Well, I’m testing out Soundcloud. It looks like a nice way to add clips to blogs and/or share songs with others. I will write more later, but here is a sample song (Straightn Up). It is something I have been working on for a while.

Straightn Up by witmerm

Animoto

 

Animoto is a Web 2.0 tool that is used to create stunning videos.  I created an account a few months ago, but I never really tested some of the features of Animoto.  It is a paid service, but they offer a free account.  There is also an educator account, but I’ll get into that later.

 What Animoto does is very impressive.  You upload pictures and/or videos as well as a piece of music.  Animoto then analyses your pictures and music and automatically creates a video.  This includes visual transitions.  Although there are programs that can already do this that most users have on their computer (iMovie and Windows Live Movie Maker), Animoto is easier and more ‘hands-free’.  It is also intelligent; it is able to sense the pacing and beats of the music, and adjust the transitions accordingly.  The transitions are also highly dynamic and original in comparison to other video applications.

               

 The first step to using Animoto is to create an account.  Additionally, educators should request a special free account upgrade by going here.  The limitations of the basic account are pretty severe.  You can only make low-quality (web-quality) videos that are 30-seconds in length.  You cannot download the files directly (although browser plugins that download videos are able to rip the videos).  The free educator accounts lets you make videos up to 10 minutes in length (full length).  You can also download the videos.  Basically, the free educator account is comparable to the All Access account, except the purposes should be educational in nature.

 

                Of course, in the interest of testing the system myself so that I can teach others, I made a video of my summer vacation.  The video is not phenomenal, but it is still a good example of Animoto.  All images were taken with my new-but-low-grade digital camera.  I uploaded the pictures to Animoto and added a few simple text slides.  I was then able to arrange the pictures in the order that I wanted.  This was a very easy process.  I just had to drag the pictures from one location in the order to another. 

 

                The next step was to select/upload music.  In interest of being relatively copyright-friendly, I uploaded an MP3 from my band in college (I didn’t ask the rest of my band if it was OK, but I promise I’ll give them a cut of the millions when my summer vacation video goes viral).  The final stage before the rendering of the video is to choose a theme for the project.  Themes control the colors of the video and the transitions.  There are a limited number of transitions to choose.  Animoto tries to entice you to upgrade to the pro plan by offering you a broader selection of themes.  Although I like the different themes, I find the original theme the most appealing.  My opinion  is that the original theme offers the most dynamic transitions and syncs very nicely with the pacing of the music.

 

Once all of your choices have been made, you click a button and Animoto begins to render your project.  Just like any other video project, this stage can take some time.  This is when the actually CPU crunching occurs.  For the video I made, I had to wait about 10 – 15 minutes until the video was ready.  If you pay the $5.00 to get a hi-res video version, expect this time to be longer.

 

Overall, I think Animoto is an exceptional product.  In my mind, it is a very professional tool that just happens to have an educational use.  If you look at some of the sample videos, you can see why.  There are many tools that are great in the classroom, but there extension beyond the k-12 environment is limited.  I think this is an added benefit to Animoto.

 

Resources:  Animoto maintains a Knowledge Base that addresses many concerns.  They also have tips during the creation process that is somewhat helpful.  Overall, there are not a lot of resources.  However, I don't believe that many resources are needed due to the simplicity of Animoto.  Animoto walks the user through many steps of the process, which makes it relatively easy to learn.   I was able to locate a step-by-step screencast at Screentoaster

 

Capture your screen in seconds

 

Curricular Areas:  I think that Animoto could be used in almost every curricular area.  The reason I say this is that it Animoto is a creative tool that lends itself to a culminating activity that is not specific to any area.  For example, it could be used in a Chemistry class as a fun way to document an experiment by using a series of pictures.  It could be used in a History or Literature class to illustrate a series of events.

Specific Lesson Activities:  I think the easiest way to incorporate Animoto into the classroom would be to have students complete another project-based activity, and take pictures/video clips along the way.  Then, the images could be used in Animoto to create a video presentation that documents the class/group's process.  This could be used in place of a Powerpoint presentation, or as an additional multimedia element in a final presentation.  Animoto also allows videos to be embedded, like my example above, which would allow students to add the video to any class wikis or blogs.

 

 

First Post

 

1. Start a blog:  DONE
2. Change the theme to look cool:  DONE (sort of)
3. Think of something interesting to say:   …..I’ll get back to you