Jennifer Bolton is married and has two sons, both special needs. She is the owner of the Special Needs in Homeschooling. Jennifer uses free resources for teaching whenever she can, to keep her boys’ interests and to tailor their learning experiences to their individual learning styles and special needs.

My eldest son, grade 9, is enrolled in an online school, and one of his courses is Media Arts. This week he is learning how to make storyboards. He needs to make a storyboard about a social issue. He has picked anti-smoking and as I write this, he is creating pictures in the Paint program. It will be handed into the teacher using PowerPoint. I wanted to make his project into something that I could put into my Home Learning Journal, a private blog, so his work can be logged and shared with family.  I was searching for a slideshow tool where I could upload the pictures he created, along with photos of him as he worked on the project.  Instead of a simple slideshow tool, I found something even better -  ANIMOTO.

“Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Using their patent-pending Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor & director, the resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.”

As you can see from the ANIMOTO video I made (below), the pictures change and mix to the sounds of the music I picked (Mozart).  ANIMOTO is very easy to use and has some great perks! ANIMOTO is all automatic; it organizes everything including unlimited short videos (30 seconds) for free. It was created by TV and film producers so it is good quality, and the pictures move to the music.

The entire video can be made within minutes. You can upload your photos from your computer as well as from Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug, Picasa, and Photobucket. Just click on the one of your choice, pick an album, and it will automatically upload the entire album. Then, right in the ANIMOTO site, you can click and delete the photos you don’t want to include. The process is easy to do and well explained.

ANIMOTO for Education is a section of the site that is specifically for educators. It offers unlimited videos for you and your students.

See how various educators are using ANIMOTO

How can Home Learners use this tool?

First off, I know what you’re going to ask.  The answer is YES!  We emailed the folks at ANIMOTO to see if homeschoolers could sign up for ANIMOTO for education.  Their response was “homeschoolers most certainly do qualify for our program!”

When you sign up for ANIMOTO for Education they provide you with a Classroom Code. Students receive All-Access (make sure they register though the link they provide you), which allows you to control the child’s use of the site. Through this link, many students can access the site at the same time, allowing you to work with all your children simultaneously or create a video you can all share! The Education site allows full length videos for presentations, and the videos can be downloaded to be viewed with no Internet access.

Animoto gives the freedom to teach different lessons at the same time, and you can teach your younger children while your older child gets a verbal lesson through the video. Children can create their own presentations that can be shared by emailing the URL or by posting to another website.

That brings the issue of safety. ANIMOTO states, “All videos are completely private. The only way someone can watch a video is if they are directed to that video’s specific URL, or if that video is posted to another website. Also, no one will be able to contact your students via Animoto.” With you watching over your students through their link, you can be sure to know what your students are doing with their videos.

ANIMOTO also has an ANIMOTO For Business, ANIMOTO For Business: Photography (good for art class!), and the Facebook application, so be sure to check them out! Get your professional videos today!

If you sign up for ANIMOTO, let us know how you made out! What have you done with it?