Final

**"Lights, Camera, Animoto!"**
**What Is Animoto? ** As stated earlier, Animoto is a multi-media site. Essentially that means you are using more than one form of content; music, pictures and video in the case of Animoto. It is a three step process (yes that' s right three steps). You upload your pictures and videos, you choose the music and then you create your video. The "Create" button and the genuises at Animoto render a polished, professional video that will make you look amazing. We agree with Joyce Valenza (a high school library media specialist) who discusses Aminoto for educators and states : You are getting close to the end of the year and you are looking for something to motivate and engage your students and staff. Something that will provide some zip to your current unit or lessons and isn't going to send you, the students or the staff over the edge with a ton of work. Well, you are in a luck as you can use a multi-media site called Animoto. Multi-media tool? What is that? Don't panic, believe us when we say you can do this. We know you can because we are inexperienced non-techno teachers in the library who used this tool, on our own, and with our classrooms. You have already come this far, so you may as well invest another five minutes and be assured that yes, you too can be an Animoto star. "Animoto is a magically-easy way to grab attention, produce professional-looking public relations products, archive an event, visually showcase our best, and create new visual contexts."

Animoto is easy to use, and it is easy to join too. All you really need is an e-mail. At [|www.animoto.com] you can sign up for a free account; however, you are limited to only 30 second videos. This is a great place for you to begin playing and see just how easy it is to use! So find your inner child and go explore. The guys at Animoto know you are new to the game, and they've made it easy for you! The first thing Tracy did when she got on was to upload her wedding pictures and turn them into a video. So easy, and it made her feel like the movie star she'd always wanted to be!
 * Joining Animoto! **

** Animoto for Educators ** The beauty of being a teacher, though, is that Animoto offers preferred access to educators. If you sign up for an educator account at [], you will receive full access and be able to create full length videos for free! The guys at Animoto don't advertise this option on their front page though. So unless you search "animoto and education," you won't find the link to do this easily. We feel that in order to fully appreciate and experience the possibilities, you need to try Animoto with full access. It's still easy to sign up, and you still only need an e-mail address. Animoto gives teachers the best of both worlds - full access and free! One caution is that Animoto creates class accounts on a first come, first served basis. Do not expect to register for your class account before school and use it that same day. It can take up to a few days to receive your account information. Creating a Class Account Once you receive your teacher code, your students can sign in to Animoto and create their account using their own e-mail. The sign up form will ask for a promo code, and that is where they will type in the educator's code you received when you registered. This will give your students full access to Animoto. Animoto will provide you a timeline within which you must register your accounts. After this date, your code will expire, and you will need to apply for a new one. For safety reasons, you may prefer to have students register with "dummy" e-mail accounts. Yes, that's the techy term! This will take some time depending on how many you have to create, but it is very handy. We used Gmail because we know that it is one of the e-mail providers that allows you to do this easily. Also, this method of registering is recommended by Animoto if you have younger students. Students under 13 are not able to register for their own accounts, but they can use Animoto if they have a "dummy" e-mail and use your classroom code when you register. The added bonus, everything they do goes through your main e-mail account. Not sure what the heck we're talking about? We weren't either when we first heard about it either. In fact, until we had actually done it, we weren't totally sure we got it!

It works like this: We chose to create a special gmail account for school projects. For our purposes here, let's say it was awesometl@gmail.com. We then created awesometl+1@gmail.com; awesometl+2@gmail.com and so on all the way to awesometl+30@gmail.com. Once Animoto videos are complete, a finished copy of the video shows up on your screen and another is automatically delivered to your email. But any e-mail sent to one of the "dummy" accounts actually goes to the main e-mail address (yours). It offers just a little more control which may be especially important with younger students. We love this feature.


 * I Can Do What With Animoto **** ? **

showcase your library book trailers showcase class trips, social studies fairs, culture fairs introduce or summarize a unit

showcase your library book trailers showcase class trips, social studies fairs, culture fairs digital story telling classroom account videos are private ( no one can view vidoes or contact students) unless uploaded to a public site a wide variety of ways to use Animoto no techie knowledge required (yay) motivating and engaging for students and staff quick and easy to learn With any new Web 2.0 tool there are cautions that as an educator you will need to be aware of so you can be successful. So on that note here is our list of cautions: is a web based application so you must have high speed internet and Flash will not allow for individual editing no fine tuning allowed and therefore the level of creativity is limited to choice of images, photos and music limited to amount of text that you can use copyright - be sure that music, images and photos are copyright free students under 13 are not allowed to have their own account and therefore you must create a master account and inform parents inappropriate material could be viewed when searching for images if you are not on a safe site such as compfight.com
 * any assignment you might previously have done with Power Point
 * science projects
 * visual arts to study artist, paintings etc.
 * student video projects
 * insert your creative ideas here
 * Celebrations: **
 * student video projects
 * insert your creative ideas here
 * Celebrations: **
 * Celebrations: **
 * Cautions: **

So believe us when we say yes it is that easy. Below are two examples of videos we created highlighting two Saskatoon Public School libraries and another to create a book trailer. [] Now all that is left to do is to get in that director’s chair and shout: “Lights, Camera, Animoto!” Brisco, S. (2008). ANIMOTO. School Library Journal, 54(7), 64.[|http://search.ebscohost.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca] McPherson, K. (2008). Mashing literacy. Teacher Librarian, 35(5), 73-75. [] Valenza, J. (2008, April 4). Announcing:animoto for education. Retrieved from []
 * Want to L **** earn More? **