Animoto Physical Environment

Learning about Physical Environment

UEN:

Standard 1 Analyze ways cultures use, maintain, and preserve the physical environment.

Objective 3a Identify ways people use the physical environment (e.g. agriculture, recreation, energy, industry).

Education Technology:

Standard 8 Use technology resources (e.g., calculators, data collection probes, videos, educational software) for problem-solving, self-directed learning, and extended learning activities. (5, 6)

ISTE:
Creative Communicator, Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.

The tool that I chose to use was Animoto, it’s a tool where you can create videos with pictures and music. This is a great tool to use, to show people something visually, which I like.  I am more of a visual learner myself, so I like this tool.  You have a description of what the picture is and then you can teach material through that.  I would use this video to teach certain material, it’s great to show or explain things.  There are so many different kinds of learners and this would be a great way to teach by showing my students visually what they are learning.  I like to be able to teach by different types of tools.  

The pros of this tool are that it is a great way to teach visually, you can show students these videos and they are able to learn from seeing.  It’s a good alternative to just teaching them.  You can insert your own pictures that you want and you can also add in text slides which is nice. There was also music that you added to the videos, the music had a nice variety to choose from.    

The cons of this tool are that it is difficult to introduce all the information about a picture that you need in only a few words or only 50 characters.  Also some of the templates or backgrounds, make it harder to pay attention to the video because they are distracting or they cut the pictures down.

I will use this tool to present information as a new and fun way to introduce information.  I can have my students watch these videos and they can then tell me what they saw and why what these videos presented were important.  They can also watch these videos as much as they want.

My students can use this tool by making their own presentations, they can make presentations on whatever they wanted.  You could make one of these to introduce a book, introduce new concepts, or even make this an option as a project.