We’re half-way through 2013. Like I’ve done in years past, this week I’ll be featuring some of the best new tech tools of 2013 as well as some of the most popular posts of the year.

Soo Meta is a digital presentation tool from the same people that developed the YouTube remixing tool Dragon Tape.
Soo Meta allows you to combine videos from YouTube, pictures from the
web or from your desktop, text, and voice recordings to create a
presentation. You can also pull content in from Pinterest and Twitter to
use in your final product.

The Soo Meta editor is fairly easy to use. Create a free account to get started then open your browser to SooMeta.com/create/
and title your first project. After titling your project add a
background image from your computer or from the web. Next pull in a
video from YouTube. The video can be yours or any other publicly shared
video. You can trim the start and the end time of the video in the Soo
Meta editor. To add text just click the text box in the editor and type.
Finally, to narrate a frame (Soo Meta calls them chapters) in your
project click the microphone icon in the editor and make your recording.
Completed Soo Meta projects can be embedded into your blog or website. I
created a one chapter story about my dogs and embedded it below (press
the green play button in the lower right corner).

Applications for Education
There are quite a few possible uses of Soo Meta
in the classroom. You could have students create projects about in
which they create book trailers using video clips, images, and their
voices. Students could use Soo Meta to create a digital collage of media
around a current events topic that they’re studying. Soo Meta might
also be used by students to create a showcase of their best digital
works of the semester.