My 8th grade students are creating Public Service Announcement videos. They are working in groups and have finished the brainstorming using Bubbl.us. I spent a couple of days looking for a free online video and audio editing tool. I first tried Animoto, but the free account only allowed 30 seconds of video. So this was out. Next, I went to JayCut, but sadly they are not taking new users at this time. MovieMasher looked too hard, and you had to download it, so I figured that fell out of the Web 2.0 relm. Finally, I did a Google search for "Top Online Video Ediors" and I came across a site that recommended Creaza. It's a newbie to the game, but I thought I would give it a try. I also found a site called Pixorial, and watched the demo. It seemed simple enough - I might give it a try later.
Creaza is a suite of web-based creativity tools from a creator in Norway.
There are four tools in the Creaza toolbox that will help your students organize knowledge and tell stories in new creative ways.
- Mindomo is the mind mapping tool. Students can use this tool to organize thoughts, ideas, links, and other information visually. Mindomo is the perfect tool for exploring new material, looking at connections, and organizing thoughts for further development. The mind map topics can contain media files, links, and text.
- Cartoonist is a cartooning tool that students can use to create multimedia stories. Cartoonist can be used to create comic strips or more personal digital narratives. The finished product can be viewed online or printed out.
- Movie Editor helps students produce their own movies based on Creaza’s thematic universes, video, images, and sound clips. Students can use the Movie Editor to edit a short film, create a news cast, a commercial, a film trailer, etc. Movie Editor can import film clips, sound clips and images to tell a story.
- Audio Editor is the final tool in Creaza’s creative suite. Audio Editor is a tool that allows your students to produce audio clips. Students can use Audio Editor to splice together their own newscasts, radio commercials, radio interlude, etc.
Signup was easy and most of my 8th graders have their own email to make their own account. So I don't think this will be a problem.
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Although we won't be creating cartoons until later, I decided to try it. Just for fun. No, I'm not ADD, okay maybe a little. I created a two-slide manga cartoon in the Cartoonist. The setup looked and felt very similar to GoogleDocs or Word. It was a drag and drop format with the background, characters, animals, props and emotions. I was thinking even a young elementary school student could successfully use it. I was also able to change my background from day to night with a click of the button. I could add talking and thought bubbles (again drag and drop) along with the basic text formatting tools. After saving, it appeared on my homepage to play. I have not played around with other cartoon/comic strip tools, but I have a feeling that this was on the simple/basic side.
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I made a short 30 second video using the Movie Editor. Boy was this a breeze compared to using Adobe Premier.It has the typical set up and look of any basic video editor. You have the capability to import your own video, graphics, and music. You can save, but you can't export unless you have the full version. This is a problem that I will have to find an immediate solution. I will need my students to be able to export their movies. Hmmm - another day, another blog...
I just used video and music that was already in Creaza. It was very easy to split the video to insert and delete parts, and add transitions. It also had an editing mode to place effects onto the video. I split my video up and applied various effects just to play with it. I used TV lines, blur, dream, and invert color. I also used fade and slide transitions. There was a separate track for video, graphics, backgrounds, and audio - pretty much all the basic stuff. I think this will be sufficient for my 8th graders to use. It will be a nice starting place for them.
Here is the awesome video!
This video was an absolute blast to put together!!
Watch the sky in the highway scene!
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The Audio Editor contained eight channels to allow for layering. You can import your own audio or it browse through the premade sound clips. The categories include:
- sound effects
- weather
- traffic
- people
- hospital
- nature
- animals
What I found to be really funny was the animal sounds were created by the BBC! They sounded British, if an animal can. My students will have a blast listening to these sound clips! I can only imagine what they will come up with. I will have them use this to add sound to their PSA videos. One down side was that you could not create your own music by inserting drums, piano, guitar pieces (like Garage Band). Might look into Aviary for creating the music.
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The last tool I looked at was Mindomo. I will say this blows away Bubbl.us! This is a really cool mindmaping tool. Again, the graphical interface was similar to look and feel of Word. It was very easy to use, easier than Bubbl.us. I started with a bubble in the middle and made a couple of topics and subtopics. I liked that I could add graphics such as thumbs up/down, ?, light bulb, etc. to my bubbles, along with notes, hyperlinks, tasks,and even multimedia. Mindomo had a slew of stock pictures and some animations to choose from, or I could use my own. I also used a relationship link to link back a subtopic to the main bubble - kinda cool. I will definitely have to let the students use this one.
Well that's all she wrote,
Til next time,
KV Techno Snake Kramer
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