Students have been reading, interpreting, analyzing, and writing poetry since the beginning days of education. The problem is we still ask students to do all of this using the same strategies for centuries. With technology, we have the ability to get our poetry animated and allow it to come to life.
South Carolina English Language Arts teachers recently had their conference at Kiawah Island, South Carolina. A teacher who attended the conference heard of animated poetry so we did some investigating. At first, we thought the presenter had used Adobe Flash, but I am not a fan of it simply because it is a pay program. Next we looked at Animoto and it seems to be a good solution.
First Animoto is free. Educators can get an education license which allows them to create full length movies plus the the teacher can create 50 student accounts. The promo code for the student accounts will be sent to your email. Your education license plus the 50 free student accounts allows you to create full length videos and download them. Your education license is good for 6 months then you must renew. The normal free license only allows 30 second videos and no download.
With the Animoto for Education service, students under 13 may use the service. Before using however, I strongly suggest you read the terms of service for Animoto for Education first.
Creating an animated poem is fairly easy. First, we read our poem, Cross by Langston Hughes, and did a voice recording using the free software Audacity. Audacity allows you to turn it into an mp3. Next, we gathered our images then uploaded the images and mp3 track to Animoto. I suggest playing around with the themes in Animoto because it really brings your poetry alive, or should I say ANIMATED!!
Here is the link to my Animated Poem, Enjoy!!!
P.S. I made the video before registering for an education account, so I was limited to 30-seconds.
http://animoto.com/play/m10jfA4J1KrjoYsxqoMCGQ
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