Animoto

Animoto is easy to use and a lot of fun! You can upload photos and video, and the app puts them together in a kaleidoscope of shapes and forms. You can also add music from your desktop or purchase something from iTunes. Once the video is completed, you can edit it, and share via email or embedding your blog or Website, as I have done here:



The free version of this editing tool is only 30 seconds long (about 12 photos). For $3 US you can upgrade to an any length video, or for $30, you can make any length videos for a year. Ronaldo Lima's school uses the latter option, and students use Animoto extensively as a way of publishing their projects.

To use the program, students would take and select photos and video of their project, arrange and upload the shots, and select appropriate music. (There is very little writing involved, unlike other programs where there might be titling on each photo.) I believe students could, however, create a desktop recording (e.g., with Audacity) describing the photos as they flash by, and use that file instead of the "music" accompaniment. For an additional $5 per video, you can make a higher resolution or MPG4 version that can be downloaded and/or burned to a DVD.

Thanks to Ronaldo Lima of the Webheads for mentioning this app.

ScreenJelly

This little screencasting app, ScreenJelly, seems very easy to use, though it has only a 3-minute recording time limit. You can record what you are doing on your computer screen with your own voice-over. The program is very self-evident, i.e., it takes only a few minutes to figure out how to use it (and there is a helpful how-to video both here and at Stannard's TTV site). I can see its immense usefulness for a teacher (or students) to create little help videos for new technology learners. Links or embedding are possible with such social Web tools as Twitter or Flickr, et al.

Thanks to Russell Stannard--found on his most useful site.

Google Wave

Google Wave (see The Complete Guide) looks like the re-invention of email, kind of a combination of bulletin board, screencast, and mail. It will definitely be a pleasure to use. This is a nice illustration of the Wave:



There are a number of other things it can do, like embed "attachments," and I imagine it will have some audio/voice capability. You need an invitation to try it, however.