Animoto and VoiceThreads Education

Two great online tools have recently unveiled education versions of their respective products. Animoto education edition provides teachers with a classroom code they can give to all their students. The code allows students to sign up for full access for free. Better yet, student videos can be downloaded so that you don't have to rely on an Internet connection when you want to watch the finished products with your class. This is a great service being offered by an awesome video creation tool and I encourage you to check it out. Here is a short Animoto video I created some time ago and included in my initial post back in September of 2007.


Voicethreads has also recently announced an education version of their great product. Their education edition is called Ed.VoiceThread and it allows teachers or schools to sign up for a classroom account, which costs $60 for an entire year. Students get their own accounts only after they are created by a teacher or school administrator. Students are not required to have an e-mail and they can only see content (other VoiceThreads) that are part of the Ed.VoiceThread community. In addition, they can only communicate with individuals from within that same community. This is a ridiculously low price for a great service. If you haven't checked out VoiceThreads yet here is a thread I created with my EDT 511 class at the University of Michigan-Dearborn to demonstrate how my students (all practicing k-12 teachers) might use this tool in their own classrooms.