When I looked at Animoto today, and realized what it did, my initial thought was,
“foul!”
“Unfair!”
It’s pretty much the same response I experienced when I saw Garageband for the first time. “They’ve made it too easy.” “Now anyone can make music. ” “I’ve invested enormous time and effort into meticulously assembling musical recordings, one note at a time — and now you just lop in and stretch out prerecorded loops… ”
Probably the same reaction I use to ridicule as DOS wizards objected to the graphical users interface of the first Macs.
Like Garageband, Animoto is a new tool designed to perform a specific task. I use Garageband to add and slightly alter the music for each of my podcast programs — takes about 10 minutes. I will continue to work as meticulously as always, assembling notes into more complete works, using my old software, as I have time — perhaps when I retire [shrug].
Animoto is not for video production. It doesn’t communicate in the sense that I usually think of using video to compellingly convey a message. It makes exclamation points. It gets attention.
My daughter will be delivering her first lesson in her methods class in a few weeks. I’m going to suggest that she consider opening it with a short Animoto video to get attention — generate some curriosity.
Check out my second attempt with pictures from Flickr, tagged with edubloggercon07 and Salsa On Toast, my brief foray into Latin music.
I had to run right over and try this. It was so fun and so easy. Can’t wait to show this off to some teachers tomorrow!
You’re so dedicated! My first attempt involved photos of my boys – just proving how mumsy I am!
http://karynromeis.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-boys.html
BTW my colleague at the next desk is chortling at my excited identification of faces I know in your collage!
I think this tool could make some great sparks or pre-title hooks for a multimedia presentation. I’m very excited about being able to do stuff that was previously restricted to clever people like you!-)
Thanks for sharing this cool tool with us! I spent a few minutes today and created a short video of our staff that I am going to share with them as an intro to our meeting.
Animoto does Rock!!