derek e. baird

Animoto: Learning Made Musical (and Fun)

Animoto is a slick new web app that takes your pictures, mashes it with audio, and creates a music video that can be exported to YouTube or embedded in a variety of social networks or blog.

Here's a Animoto short video I created using moblog pictures I took on a recent trip to San Francisco. I uploaded my pictures from Flickr, picked a slick track by The Dimes, and Animoto did the rest!

There are lots of ways you can use Animoto in the classroom. Animoto is a natural fit for project based learning activities. This is a great way to get students actively interested in history, literature or even science.

And unlike the open web, Animoto provides teachers and students with a controlled environment for them to create and share video. Other sharing options include email to a friend, downloads (for Pro accounts) and some sort of iTunes integration.

Creating a music video with Animoto is also a great way to open the conversation about copyright and Creative Commons. One of the barriers for educators using this type of technology is fear about using music and all the copyright issues that pop up when using an audio track in a video project.

Animoto has done the education community a great service by providing a wide variety of music that can be used by students and teachers. Creative Commons also has a wide selection of music that can be used in an Animoto movie.

You can import your images from all the major photo sites, including Flickr, Facebook, Picassa Web Albums, and Photobucket. Film shorts are free, and full-length videos are $3 bucks. All in all, Animoto sports some really amazing technology.

I have no doubt that the education community is going to create some really amazing projects using Animoto. And towards that end, I've created a public YouTube group, AnimotoEDU, where you can share your classroom project with other educators.

Related Resources

• YouTube Group > AnimotoEDU
• Animoto: The Buzz
• Creative Commons > Audio
• Animoto Blog
• Education & Copyright

Survey: Microsoft Education & Digital Copyright

Microsoft has released the results of a study it conducted regarding teens, illegal downloads and copyright. Among the findings:

- American teenagers between 7th and 10th grades are less likely to illegally download content from the Internet when they know the laws for downloading and sharing content online;

- 49% of respondents said they are not familiar with the rules and guidelines for downloading images, literature, music, movies and software from the Internet;

- 11% said they understood the rules of copyright and illegal downloading of content "very well";

-  76% of boys and 68% of girls said that they would not continue after being told the rules to download or share content over the Internet without paying for it.

In conjunction with the findings of the survey, Microsoft Education has developed model curriculum and resources for educators to help them educate students on the issues around copyright, digital literacy and illegal downloading of content.

In addition they have created, MyBytes, a site where t/weens can learn more about copyright and "develop their own intellectual property and assign usage rights by mixing music online to create a custom riff that they can download as a ring tone."

I think it would also be interesting to survey teachers and see how well they understand "educational fair use" and other issues around copyright. My guess is that they are as confused about what digital content they are allowed to use as the rest of us.

Thankfully, organizations like Creative Commons are taking the lead on the copyright issue, providing a set of alternative licenses to traditional copyright while the lawyers and publishing/recording/movie industry figure it out for themselves.

Related Resources

• Microsoft > Teens Less Likely to Download Study
• MyBytes
• Teacher Guide to IP
• Yahoo! Teacher Document > Creative Commons 101

Many Voices For Darfur Project

Learn more about the Many Voices for Darfur project. This is a great way to get your students involved in world events. This project was started by Mr. Mayo, a teacher from Rockville, Maryland.

Get Involved!

Related Resources

• Mr. Mayo Blog
• Flickr > tag > darfur
• Wikipedia > Darfur
• Yahoo! Teacher Document > Twitter Many Voices Project

Teachers talked. Yahoo! listened.

Film Credit: BAYCAT, a non-profit community media producer that educates, empowers and employs underserved youth and adults in the digital media arts.

In July of 2006, Yahoo! invited a cadre of teachers, media specialists, and librarians to come spend a week on the Yahoo! campus and talk about how together we could leverage the technology and social media know-how at Yahoo! to support teachers in the classroom. We called this group of educational pioneers our Yahoo! Teachers of Merit.

They came from urban, suburban, wired, not-so-wired, public and private schools located all over the San Francisco Bay Area. We had veteran teachers and newbie teachers. We had first year Teach for America teachers and teachers entering their final year of teaching. We asked this amazing and diverse group of educators to bring their teacher's eye, and plenty of advice.

We wanted to know what technology works, what doesn't work in the classroom. We also made it clear that Yahoo! understands it's about using technology to support instruction, not using instruction to support technology.

The result is Yahoo! For Teachers a free ePortfolio and global community for educators. We want you to join us! You can sign up for an invite over on the YFT preview site.

Related Resources

• WebProNews > Yahoo! For Teachers Shaping up Nicely
• Hacking Education with Yahoo! For Teachers
• Yahoo! For Teachers
• del.icio.us + Yahoo! Teachers
• Flickr + Yahoo! Teachers

 

Mashup Edu: A New Digital Pedagogy

Dr. Mercedes Fisher and I just finished a new book chapter titled "Pedagogical Mashup: Social Media, Gen Y and Digital Learning Styles" that will be published early next year. I'll have more details in a future post, but in the meantime I wanted to share the bounty of resources we culled together for the article.

We've saved the links for all the resources and references cited in the book chapter over on the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us, which you can find here: http://del.icio.us/mashup.edu

If you have any questions, or know of a great Education 2.0 resource that we should include, let us know!

Related Articles by Mercedes Fisher & Derek E. Baird

• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning & Mobile Technologies
• Social Software & Online Learning Design
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles

Digital Learning Styles, Gen Y & Yahoo!

Related Resources

• Yahoo! for Teachers + Slideshare 
• Slideshare Group > Yahoo! for Teachers
• Yahoo! for Teachers
• Learning Styles 2.0: Digital, Social, and Always On

Creative Commons: Wanna Work Together?

This is a great introduction to Creative Commons. I learned about this video from one of the amazing teachers attending the Yahoo! Teachers workshop in New York City a few weeks ago. Thanks Mr. Circe!

Resources

• Flickr + Creative Commons
• Flickr + Yahoo! Search
• Mr. Circe Blog

Collaborative Art 2.0: The Moo-Art Project

Have you heard about the Moo-Art Project? It's a collaborative (global) web-based art installation. I think. Actually, it's hard to figure out exactly what or who is behind this project. As best I can tell it's not affiliated with the fine folks over at Moo. But then I might be wrong. Don't hold me to it.

Sidebar: If you are a member of Flickr or Vox and haven't checked out Moo Cards, you're missing out. Go. Now! Well. After you finish reading this post will be fine. Thank you.

So back to the Moo-Art Project. I don't know what the heck it is, but i'm intrigued. So I plopped down my 10€ (approx $13 USD) and I'm now the proud owner of piece 37. I don't know what that means either. Sorry.

But like I said, I'm intrigued. I'll keep you posted when (or if) I figure it all out.

Flickr Groups Upgrade

Flickr just announced some new and exciting features to help you moderate your Flickr group: News Flash, Invite a Photo, Group Rules, Photo Moderation and Tiered Group Administration. Yay! More ways to connect with your community in Flickr!

You can read more about these improvements over on the 100% official Flickr blog.

Edutopia: My Friend Flickr

The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) has long been an advocate of helping teachers use technology to support instruction and student learning in the classroom. This month's edition of Edutopia, their online community and print magazine, has a feature article on using Flickr in the classroom.

The article, written by Amy Standen, features interviews with Tim Lauer, Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ and several other educators on how they use Flickr in their classroom.

At the end of the article, Amy lists several education oriented groups created in Flickr. These groups (and there are quite a few!) are an excellent way to find out how your colleagues are using Flickr in their classrooms. So read the article, check out and join a Flickr education group today!

Also worth noting:

• Flickr has over a million photos with a Creative Commons license that you are free to use in classroom projects.

• You can create a private Flickr group where you control both membership as well as the content in the group. This is a great way to create a "micro-Flickr" for your school and/or classroom.

• There are a TON of Flickr hacks (like Spell with Flickr) created by and for members of the Flickr community that you can use to make some fun and creative art projects. Huge Big Labs (aka FD's Flickr Toys) has an excellent (and free!) collection of Flickr projects. Thanks FD!

• Jeff Utech, the uber edublogger behind The Thinking Stick (always a must read!) has posted a Flickr tutorial over on YouTube.

• One of my favorite Flickr projects ever is the Flat Bobby Project. You can read more about her project by clicking here. This was a great example of what Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake calls the "culture of generosity" that flows freely through the Flickr community.

Related Links

• Flickr + Creative Commons
• World War I Photo Archive
• FlickrEdu: Social Networking Goes to School
• debaird.net + Flickr