Digital Story

Last week I created a digital story in Animoto and embedded it into my blog. Animoto is actually extremely easy to use, and the videos that it automatically creates look great. However, even though my video is only about thirty seconds, it took a long time to create it. The problem was that the pictures I tried to upload were too large. I finally figured out that I had to resize the images in order to speed up the uploading process. I downloaded a program that allowed me to do this. So, even though my video looks simple, it actually represents about an hour of work. In the future, I could create videos like this in a few minutes. The key is resizing the images in advance. I still don't know how to save this video into the public folder. I understand how to access this folder, but I can't figure out how to save videos in Animoto. Has anyone done this before? I created a digital story in iMovie a few years ago, and I have always loved the concept. I wanted to try Animoto because Nancy Bisbe introduced this program earlier in the year. It seemed like something that junior high students would easily understand. The problem with it is that you have to pay for videos that are over thirty seconds. I think it would be fun for students to create videos for novels with Animoto. They could select music, quotes from their books, and images that represent themes and concepts from the reading. I may use this for an outside required reading assignment fourth quarter. I know they would enjoy it.