I just had an idea for using Animoto in the classroom that I think anyone interested in globally connecting classrooms may have an interest in. For those of you unfamiliar with Animoto, it is a free program that mixes your images and music together to create music videos. You can read more about Animoto here or here.

Here’s my idea; have students collect images of the community they live in and put them into an Animoto show. Students should select images that they believe best represents their community. Then connect with another school willing to share Animoto movies about their local community. Connecting to another school could be accomplished through a general inquiry on Twitter or through a service like ePals. This project could be particularly interesting if you can connect with a school that is a different climate or a different hemisphere than your school. If anyone has done this or think you may try it, please send me an email. I have four students that will be creating Animoto videos next week and putting them up on a blog. When they’re done I’ll post the link.

Here is a short Animoto video I made about the mountains near my home.