Animoto is a free video creation service. Users can select or upload images to their account then select from a list of royalty-free music or upload their own audio tracks.  Animoto mixes the music and images to create a professional looking video in minutes. If you don’t like the video you can remix the video using the same images and audio until you get something you’re satisfied with.

Animoto is a great way for students to quickly create a great looking presentation without the teacher having to spend a lot of time teaching students how to edit or manipulate presentation software.  It is the perfect addition to your classroom’s digital storytelling kit. It is very intuitive and easy to use, in no time students have digital videos that they created! You can post or embed videos on your class site or even, are you ready for this?, download for in class presentations. Animoto for Education makes it simple to mix audio and visual for a dynamic, unique presentation in no time. It is so easy to use that students could create a complete animoto presentation in one session.

Animoto presentations are quicker to create than traditional PowerPoint type presentations making them ideal for digital storytelling in the classroom setting. Because Animoto is completely web-based, students can create videos from school and continue working on them at home. The ability to download videos is outstanding…students could save their work for offline viewing too!

If students are under 13 they can’t sign up for their own account. To use Animoto for Education with your students you can register your students with dummy accounts using dummy email addresses. Animoto is private to your school. This means that other people can’t come accross student videos or contact students through the site.

Here is an example from Tod Baker

Time to Make a Difference from Tod Baker on Vimeo.