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We've done a lot of Animoto sessions, but there are so many uses...!
Use your own photos.
This was a high school project that accompanied a "how-to" essay:
Use Creative Commons licensed images.
I was very bad on this one, though; I didn't add attributions on the end. (That's a big no-no!):
Use art or images you've created.
This was a high school project, using a web site that allows you to create "flaming font," then saving the image of each title. Plus, the last slide is a Wordle image!
Glogster really is an excellent tool for student storytelling projects (I created the one below as part of an instructional module on Elasticity of Demand); the only issue that has come up since our first workshop on Glogster is that the EDU version is no longer free. You can always use the basic (non-EDU) Glogster, but there is a lot posted on the public page that you may not be interested in seeing (angst-filled teenage girls are a large demographic...).
I have found that if you keep an eye out, you can get special offers on some of these tools -- right now, for example, Glogster EDU is running a $20/year special (for as many years as you want, up to a "perpetual" license -- good forever -- for $160). That's pretty good, given that it includes up to 200 student accounts for projects.
As with any tool, Prezi can be a force for good in the quest for improved student learning . . . Maria Andersen is an excellent example of the good use of Prezi - here is one of her most popular Prezis: "Playing to Learn."
While not strictly what one would consider a digital storytelling tool, it can certainly become a one, especially for novice storytellers, if used in conjunction with an image/set of images. Screenr would allow you to narrate as you navigate your image(s). In this example, I am actually narrating as I navigate a website, but you can use Screenr to narrate anything that you can see on your computer screen:
Videoscribe lets you create an animated story -- think of the UPS "Whiteboard" commercials! As Sparkol says, "Often called Whiteboard animation or Fast Drawing, VideoScribe replicates a stop-motion capture style of drawing that's so popular on commercials... at a fraction of the cost & time."
While the price tag on the desktop version is fairly hefty, the iPad app is currently $4.99 -- I used the iPad app to create this video. I get a decent graphics library to choose from for the illustrations, and also a good audio library of songs for background music:
This one I created on the desktop version (you can get a free 1-week trial). For the previous video, I selected an audio track from the VideoScribe library; for this one, I recorded myself doing the voiceover, then aligned the art with the narrative:
This is a fairly new tool, so the media library may not be as robust as some other tools (for example, there aren't many audio tracks to choose from at the moment). Here's what Free Technology for Teachers has to say:
"Wideo is a service that allows anyone to create animated videos and Common Craft-style videos online. You can create an animated video on Wideo by dragging and dropping elements into place in the Wideo editor then setting the sequence of animations. Each element can be re-used as many times as you like and the timing of the animation of each image can individually adjusted. Wideo's stock elements include text, cartoons, and drawings. You can also upload your own images to use in your videos."
"Xtranormal provides a cast of characters and computerized voices and sounds that you can combine to make your own animated film. New users get 300 xp (Xtranormal points) for free--about enough to make a 30-second movie. Once those are used up, you need to buy more." (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, San Jose State University).
Visual.ly (a major source of many popular infographics) defines an infographic as "data visualizations that present complex information quickly and clearly. Think of maps, signs, and charts used by statisticians or computer scientists: Wherever you have deep data presented in visual shorthand, you've got an infographic."
This video may be a little long, but it provides an EXCELLENT tutorial of two infographic creation tools, easel.ly and infogr.am:
EVEN MORE RESOURCES . . . feel free to peruse this list of past workshops, including instructions on how to use the tools ("missing" sessions are those that were later replaced with significantly revised versions, or were for tools that no longer exist):
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