June 1, 2011~ Whew, the end is near but I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on our Animoto project. Students were assigned a South Carolina Science Curriculum standard for 6th grade. Their assignment was to create an Animoto video that best represents all indicators that are covered under that standard. Students were allowed to choose their standard. Students were shared how to use a storyboard prior to researching pictures and this helped keep them focused and on-task.
Here are a few examples:
The how-to's for text on the iTouch version's included using neu.Annotate to create text on a blank PDF that I uploaded to my school webpage. Students downloaded the blank PDF and then added text and saved as an image. It was this image file that was uploaded with all the project pictures into Animoto.
Items used:
Animoto for the iTouch
Animoto (for those that had iTouch issues and it woudn't work)
neu.Annotate
PowerPoint saved as a JPEG (for one student) and imported into Animoto
Weekly Work Culminating Project
Some things for me to consider next year include:
- more emphasis on music and how it needs to compliment the project
- more emphasis on including text features so it is not just a bunch of pictures that the audience doesn't understand the meaning
- smaller storyboard template (maybe twice as many squares on one sheet)
It was fun and nice to see the students excited about the learning process both revisiting standards we had already addresses as well as new technology standards. It was also exciting to see how some students had their "ah-ha" moment about the content. Several stated that doing the project helped them better understand the content and allowed them the time to learn on their own in something they enjoy. I hope to repeat this next year and look forward to expanding to my Social Studies classes.
