Have you met Animoto, yet?

As a Tech Director I am always looking for the short and simple path to help my teachers achieve their goals. Now, as the school year draws to a close, classroom teachers prepare final projects. A great culminating project is to capture the highlights of the school year in a PowerPoint presentation. These are usually time consuming and frustrating to get right. In particular, it is difficult to get the music to work right with the images. Along comes ANIMOTO.

With a free educational account you can upload photos, add music and ... let 'er rip. Animoto takes your images, text and music and blends them together into an animated slide show.


Once you've completed the show you can email, post, download, send it to youtube.com, upgrade to a DVD, even send it to your iPhone!! The animoto that I created was based on photos from our school celebration for Purim. I just made it as a demo and it took less than 15 minutes.

What Took You So Long?

I know it has been a while since I have updated this blog, but, in my defense I have been very busy. I initiated a laptop program, installed a wireless network, supervised the reconstruction of our network, and well in general took over a different Technology Department. It's been fun, but I think for it to be enriching to you let me share some of what I have learned.

First, when initiating a project, never take anything for granted. The wireless re-seller I hired was unreliable and made the project much more difficult than it had to be for us. The new reseller I put in place is FABULOUS. I can't say enough good stuff about Real Time Consultants, Inc. They have been supportive, smart, reliable, friendly and never, never, never late or underestimate their fees. In fact, sometimes, they overestimate so I can sigh in relief!

Second, teachers are the best! I have a great faculty at my school. They are inquisitive, interested, creative and willing to take a risk. When there is a new idea they are willing to nurture it until it becomes a reality (if possible). Okay? So with all these upbeat teachers and support work I neglected my blog. I promise to make up for it.

So what' hot? Well, recently we have been working on getting grant money to support a Voicethread project. Not familiar with Voicethreads? Let me take this opportunity to introduce you.


Voicethreads encourage students to use higher order thinking and share online on topics with their class. Visit the site and watch how students will blossom in your classroom.