Well, I have to say that I did have some fun exploring Animoto and VoiceThread, creating some 'mashups' of my own. Yikes, I'm starting to incorporate the new vocabulary in to my speech! I may become social media savvy yet!
Animoto
I liked the simplicity of Animoto for the fact that there was not much thinking and no complex technical skills required. It was very easy for me to develop a short tour of our library, just in time to use at the new teacher in-service today!
McPherson (2008, p.74) presents several advantages to using Animoto:
- "enables visual, aural, and textual learners to quickly create and communicate complex new and powerful stories and messages of a multimodal nature",
- can "attract and engage learners over long periods of time",
- "develop students' online social skills" through uploading or embedding to other sites,
- "reduces the user's need to be an accomplished photographer or musician by providing access to Creative Commons resources"
Animoto's simplicity is it's greatest advantage.
There were some things that I didn't like about Animoto. Yes, the product is slick and professional looking and sounding, but really, I didn't create it. I threw some pictures and music at the proverbial fan and voila....a little visual presentation. I had no control over the way the pictures were transitioned or depicted, and even though I liked the first presentation, subsequent edit attempts and saves ended up creating something quite different. McPherson (2008) agrees that a disadvantage to Animoto is the lack of tools to refine the presentation. His particular example was in not having enough photos to match the length of the audio and in that case, the sound fades out prematurely. Not necessarily a problem if it is music, but if it is a voice with important information or final thoughts, then the conclusion is lost.
Licensing fees for Animoto could be problematic for schools. The short 30 second presentations are free to create, but if you want to do anything longer, you have to pay for it per computer. If budgets are tight, then licensing a lab may be impossible. It may be necessary to start with a few computers and see how it goes.
Editing the presentation was quite simple to do, but what I found frustrating was that I had to go through the entire process of saving the music and finalising the video each time I made a change. I tried adding some text so that my audience would know exactly which part of the library they were looking at (save,continue,finalise), but the text ended up being on screen longer than the picture, so I removed the text (save,continue,finalise). Perhaps I missed something in the editing process along the way this time around.
McPherson (2008) suggests that Animoto is great for developing critical thinking skills and cites discussions on the topics of copyright and plagiarism as good starting points, with one question to kick things off: "If I mash other people's copyright images and sound together, does the final product belong to me?" (p.75).
Better yet, should we be using those copyright items at all if we can't acknowledge or credit the source? Do we potentially lose our copyright if we post to the Web, where anyone can access, use and mashup our information or ideas?
Issues surrounding the safety of posting presentations to the Internet also need to be discussed, not just for multimedia sharing but for all sharing to the Web. It's great that students can take their works out to the world, but we don't necessarily want the world coming to our students. Richardson's (2009, p.15) sample blogging letter lists some blogging safety rules that apply generally to any Web posting such as not divulging family name, passwords, school name, city, country, email address or any other information that could assist someone in locating them (students). For teachers, this may be common sense, but for students, it is all too easy to let vital information slip and they need to be aware that they need to protect their identities at all times.
What's great about Animoto, and Web 2.0 tools in general, are the possibilities. I already have Animoto ideas for an improved library tour; highlighting activities such as our book fairs or class art displays; new books; and special events or displays in the library. McPherson (2008) also suggests that students use Animoto for creating a portfolio of their art, presenting a topic they've researched, recapping a field trip, or illustrating a life cycle, to name a few. Yes, there are lots of great ideas for this tool!
At any rate, here's the Animoto quickie tour of my library:
http://animoto.com/play/6Pm9DvG90Wo6W7OCUgarZg
VoiceThread
VoiceThread was much more to my liking in that I had more control over the outcome.
It's similar to Animoto in that you upload pictures, but different in that there are no flashy transitions or arrangements. Paricipants can add oral or written comments to the picture. My course links lead to several examples of VoiceThread being used for book discussions. A picture of the book cover is shown and the teacher or the group leader provides a synopsis of the book, then poses some questions or makes some comments about the book. Others in the group can add their thoughts and opinions about the book as well. I belong to a book club at my school and we read "Loving Frank" over the break. I'm going to try VoiceThread as a starting point for our discussion before we meet in mid-August. I also want to use it with novel studies in the grade 6 and 7 classes. It will be an experiment, but I hope to learn how to improve on this tool because I once again see the possibilities, and I like the participatory possibilities in VoiceThread. Students/particants can even "draw on the images to illustrate their points, and respond to one another's comments" (Anonymous, 2009). I want to try using VoiceThread for creating booktalks, book discussions with students, creative writing, and promoting events or initiatives in the library. An audio-visual presentation will be so much more interesting than yet another intra-school email!
One of my favourite examples of VoiceThread use from my Web 2.0 course links was a 4th grade poetry project http://voicethread.com/library/20/ where students read their poems and other students recorded comments on the poems. The other favourite was comments and reflections on the day in the life of a teacher http://voicethread.com/library/6/ Both are inspiring for ideas at my own school!
Of course, all of these wonderful new products and presentations that my colleague and I will create will be linked or embedded in the library's new wiki site, as we try to engage our patrons and be a library that is more "social media 'newsworthy'" Fichter (2007, p.59).
In keeping with my in-service day, I have created a VoiceThread library tour for our new teachers: http://voicethread.com/share/569371
References
Anonymous. (2009). Bulletin Board: VoiceThread. Principal Leadership 9(7), p.8. Retrieved July 29, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.
Fichter, D. (2007). How Social is Your Web Site? Top Five Tips for Social Media Optimization. Online 31(3), pp.57-60. Retrieved July 29, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.
McPherson, K. (2008). Mashing Literacy. Teacher Librarian 35(5), pp.73-75. Retrieved July 28, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
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