Cool Sites: Video Mashup, Animation, Language Tools…

Every week, I share my favorite websites! My goal is to post this weekly series regularly on Saturdays so you can test these tools out. However, you can get access to these fantastic websites as soon as I find them by connecting with me on Google reader!

Open Source Cinema

Open Source Cinema allows the user to join or propose video projects.  You can remix media on your own computer and other people’s media from YouTube and Flickr.  You can easily create your own video project for your students on any theme and have them each contribute images, music, and videos. Another way you can use this website is to show one of the thought-provoking video projects like the one below and have your students debate the issues or respond in a journal. Some of the videos could act as case studies. The video below describes the purpose of the website and provides some history behind creative commons! This website is in beta and I did find some bugs, but overall I think this website offers several learning opportunities. This website was shared by my friend Sue Lyon-Jones!

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is a fantastic free animation tool! There are several  characters, backgrounds, music, voices, and effects to choose from. You will have to sign-up. The tool is very simple to use and very creative videos can be made with dialogue, sound, and various voices. You can have students make animation movies or you can make one to introduce a lesson. Below is an example of what a finished animation looks like! I chose this animation, because it is a tutorial, well made, and illustrates some of the features. I recommend you check out the rest of Mojochi’s animation videos, which can be used for educational purposes. Although the website is free, please note that you will have a limited selection. However, when you create various animations you can earn points for more features.

GoAnimate.com: The Advanced Zoom Tutorial by Mojochi

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

WordOff: Blogging Tool

If you are a blogger you know one of the faux pas is copying and pasting posts from Word. The reason you should never do this is because you will have a lot of html to fix. However, when you invite guest bloggers they sometimes will send you Word documents. You now can easily clean the added html in Word documents with WordOff! Just copy and paste the html of the post you need cleaned up and the website will:

  • remove attributes for all elements including <span> and <div> tags
  • keep <a> tags for html and images
  • reduce consecutive line breaks to two

Lingt Webtools for Languages

You really must check out Lingt, which was introduced to me by Melissa Techman. With the various tools you can quickly create oral exams, incorporate video and images to create media activities, offer specific feedback to students, track individual improvement, and archive all assignments! You get a url easily accessible to students and the public if you want to share your materials. For a great example, look at this Japanese dialogue lesson.

Challenge:

Use one of the tools! Leave a comment if you found the tip useful or if you noticed a problem with the tool!

You may want to subscribe to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your RSS reader or Delicious account.

You May Also Like

More From Author