Engaging students in learning is the key to getting them to actually learn. A great way to get students engaged is to have them come up with the material for a lesson. Making an Animoto video with pictures that have been gathered by students is a great way to do this. I think that Animoto can be used in any classroom, but today, I want to specifically focus on the math classroom.
Math is truly a daily function of life. However, I don’t think that students often see it the same way. Many students need to literally see how math is all around them before the concepts they need to learn are going to make any sense. I have found this in my own life. Math was torture for me in high school. I couldn’t understand why we had to learn about all of the numbers. Still, to this day, it is hard for me to understand a math concept that is laid out solely on paper. I have to be able to see the application of the concept to something that is more concrete than numbers on a page.
Making an Animoto video with students is pretty low on the “extra work scale for teachers, and a great way to show the “concrete” side of math. Animoto videos are simple to make. The hardest part is getting the pictures together, but if you have students send in the pictures, all the teacher has to do is throw together the video.
The video below took about fifteen minutes to put together once I had all the pictures in a file. Granted, I think a teacher could do a little more, and remember this video is just a sampling of several different concepts. What I do like about making an Animoto video like this is that, once the video is posted online, the students have a reminder of the concepts they need to learn that is easily accessible. The video is also something they had a part in creating, so there is great buy from the students.
One more quick thing about Animoto. It’s free for educators. Go to Animoto-For Education and apply. Teachers get an all access pass for FREE!
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