Thing 2.1-Animoto

As I check out what everyone is doing I am getting motivated to try several of these tools.  For starters I chose Animoto because I have used it quite a bit, and because I promised I would refer at some point to my kitchen adventures.  One of my goals for 2012-and there are many-is to create a holiday cookie cookbook I can gift to family and friends next year.  This years cookie assortment were a mix of time tested favorites, and things I have always wanted to try.

The big cookie hit of the season were the "Red and Green" Velvet balls.  I made Paula Deen's Red Velvet Cake recipe, mixed it with my own cream cheese frosting recipe-1 pkg cream cheese, 1 stick butter, 2 tsp vanilla, and confectioners sugar added gradually until you reach your own desired level of sweetness.

Tried macaroons this year.  I was feeling extra ambitious and perhaps a little too confident, and decided to shape the macaroons into Christmas trees as I had seen in a back issue of Martha Stewart Living.  They were not as "perfect" as Martha's but they tasted great.  In the future I will stick with the classic pyramid shape, and dip them in chocolate for added deliciousness.

Lastly, I tried out some new cookie cutters from King Arthur-a snow globe and a mitten.  Had aspired to do some really intricate decorating, but since most of the decorating took place on Christmas Eve, they did not turn out as I had hoped, but pretty nonetheless.



Back to Animoto:  I have used this tool a lot.  I find that my students love it, and it is so darn easy, every child was successful!  Animoto made learning about the Dewey Decimal System a whole lot more interesting for my Fifth Grade students.  I asked students to create a short Animoto video for a specific Dewey section.  Students worked in groups and first had to peruse our items on their designated section, then in their own words they had to describe each Dewey subsection.  They then found pictures on the internet to correspond with each subsection.  Students gave credit for images in a separate document.  Students then created their videos.

In order for each group to create a video longer than 30 seconds I signed up for an educator trial.  This gives you 50 account codes.  I registered the educator trial with a Gmail account I set up for our school library--this is helpful because I was then able to set up dummy accounts from the gmail account so I could monitor all activity with the Animoto accounts.  To set up a dummy account in gmail add + then a number to the end of the account--Example:  johndoe+1@gmail.com.  This worked out very well.

Below is a link to our completed videos:
Grade 5 Animoto Project