We've just finished a poetry unit, and in addition to turning in hand-written copies, I've encouraged the students to type at least one poem into their Kidblog, and also to consider animating one on Animoto. I used Animoto a couple of years ago to make book trailers, but hadn't used it since. However, at a recent meeting I was at, the presenter was going over tech tools kids could use to publish their writing, and I remembered the fun we'd had making book trailers. Luckily there was a bunch of work time at that meeting, so I set up another Animoto account, and got my kids going on it the next day.
Animoto is designed to put pictures and text to music, playing completed works like a very short movie. My students typed in their poems, selected some pictures or short video clips that Animoto provides, and then selected music to go along with their work. If they had done this from their own home computers, they could have pulled in their own music or photos, but I kept it simple to start with, just using what Animoto provides.
Here's an example of a poem for two voices that two girls did: Animoto soccer poem.
If you want to try this with your students, here is hopefully the fastest way to set up an Animoto account. I first signed up for a free two-week trial. Then I went to their free 6 month trial for educators page. Once you sign up there, they will send you a code to type in when you set up your account. They recommend setting up a new gmail address for Animoto, which I did, and then I set up my student accounts. They say you can set up 50 student accounts, but I just set up 8, because it's a little time-consuming, and I decided the kids could all share these accounts, which has been fine so far. To set up the student accounts, you will need to log out of your account, and then click "sign up" for each new student account. As per another Animoto recommendation, all the student accounts are my gmail address with the addition of +1, +2, etc.. (that's a plus sign), so if my email was mrsquist@gmail.com, my first student account would be mrsquist+1@gmail.com. In order to keep things simple, all the student accounts have the same password. We had a discussion about only working on your work and respecting the work of the other students sharing the accounts by not editing anything that wasn't yours.
The students have really enjoyed selecting backgrounds and music for their poems, and I like the creative thinking that goes with those choices. Students whose poems are about darker subjects have had to think about what style of music would best represent their topic. We've chatted about whether songs with words are too distracting when you're reading a poem, so maybe a choice of instrumental music would be better.
Several students have also made book trailers to "advertise" a book they've read. They storyboard out what they want to say, giving a teaser about what the book is about, but not revealing the ending, and then type it in just like the poems. There are certainly other online tools kids can use to publish their writing, but Animoto is very easy once you set it up, and the results are fun to see.
