Fun with Video Tools

I have seen so many commercials and presentations using video tools, and they all look amazing. The graphics are unique, the picture is clear, and the sound bites or music add the cherry on top. I played around with three different video tool websites: Powtoon, Animoto, and Wideo. Unfortunately, what I came to eventually learn after several days of working with these sites, is that not all video making tools are created equal!

Animoto

Animoto was a tool that has been used frequently by students in my current school. Our previous ITC used to work with classes to create short video projects (or maybe longer - I'm not sure if the school has a license membership) throughout the school year. Though I have never seen a completed Animoto product, I figured, "If the students could figure it out, so could I!" 

With that I began to look at the various template options for the free trial. I found the Animoto seemed more like a tool used for presentations rather than for making videos. I decided to create a video slide show of my dog Rudy. I used a colorful template and uploaded several photos to include. With a 30 second time limit I found that I could only utilize seven photos. That may sound like a lot, but it was really difficult to tell the story of Rudy with only seven pictures! I tried to add a bit of text between each picture, but with each text page a picture was deleted. After several hours of frustration I decided to add a caption to each photo, however when the video played through the captions were very hard to read.

Of the three sites that I explored, Animoto was my least favorite due to the time restrictions and overall lack of options in the slide show creations. Though I wasn't a huge fan of this site, Animoto can still be incorporated into the classroom in many ways similar to how audio tools can be utilized. I can see this tool used by the teacher to issue an assignment, directions for a task, or to show a writing prompt. 

See my attempt at an Animoto video here: http://animoto.com/play/ru30J3waALQ5gg20lQ9O3A#. 

Wideo

After my trials with Animoto, I moved onto Wideo. This site was very bright and seemed to have more interactive tools than Animoto, but I also found the site to be less user friendly. The template options were limited and I found that when I chose a template I could not edit the background or overall design of the slide in any way. It could have been user error, but I tried continuously using many different templates without success. I also found it extremely different to figure out exactly how long the entire slide show was and how to preview the playback. Each page required its own settings and needed to be adjusted differently to transition, making the editing process more difficult than I felt that it needed to be.

There were many positive options on this site, including neat graphics, backgrounds (when you start from scratch not using a template), and fun transitions from page to page. There were several music options to accompany the video as well, which were fun to experiment with. As with the Animoto site, Wideo seemed to also function more as a slide show tool than a video tool. I ended up making a very basic slide show with uploaded images, graphics from the site, and text boxes. 

Wideo can be a fun tool to use in the classroom as a portfolio for students to showcase their work (maybe for Art) or for a project presentation also.

See my attempt at a Wideo video here: http://www.wideo.co/view/4038581403957382008-?from=cp. 

Powtoon

Powtoon was my favorite site to use, hands down. There were several template options with suggested uses from pitching a product to giving directions to Mission Impossible. Once I chose my template I found that there were even more themed design options including cartoon sketches, holidays, monsters, people, and so on. One of my favorite aspects of this tool was the freedom. I initially chose a template, but then I explored the site a little more and found the themed design options from which I was able to switch out everything. I changed the backgrounds, fonts, mixed & matches animated icons from different themes - it was amazing! It also had more font options, music choices, and slide length manipulation than any other site I had previously used.

I spent the most time working with Powtoon because it felt like my options were almost endless. I think I could have spent a week changing up my video because with each change brought a better design. Unlike Animoto and Wideo, Powtoon seemed more like an actual video making tool as opposed to a slide show creator. The clarity of the overall product was clean and professional looking, and it actually looked a little like those commercials I have seen!

I am very excited to use Powtoon with students in the future. This tool can be used in so many ways, but showcasing a science experiment or STEM project sticks out to me the most. The interactive nature of this tool can allow students to show the progression of an experiment with each stage of the Scientific Method, or show each of the trials for their STEM activity. 

See my attempt at a Powtoon video here: http://www.powtoon.com/p/caeAwIbVM44/. 

Sources

Animoto, video file download. http://animoto.com/. Animoto, n.d. Web. <http://animoto.com/>.

Powtoon, video file download. http://www.powtoon.com/. Powtoon, n.d. Web. <http://www.powtoon.com/>.

Wideo, video file download. http://wideo.co/. Wideo, n. d. Web. <http://wideo.co/>.