Animoto

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine showed me a video she created online with Animoto. Animoto is a very easy to use tool to create high impact videos from still pictures. Essentially, Animoto does all the work. Once registered, you just need to upload your images through their online uploading tool and choose music. Animoto does the rest! You can choose music from their music library, or upload your own music to accompany your video. Generally, you can create as many 30 second videos as you like for free and 'full length' videos are $3.00 each. However, Animoto is FREE for educators. With an 'all access' pass, you can create as many full length videos as you like for FREE. You can then download the videos to your computer or post them online to a number of places (including a web page, blog, facebook, etc.

Check out Animoto and register for your free educator account and start creating impressive videos. You need to register through the educator link in order to receive the All Access Pass.

PowerPoint Show

Saving PowerPoint Slide Shows for Viewing on any computer

I get many questions regarding PowerPoint files and how to save them so that they can be accessed regardless of the version of PowerPoint on a given computer. Often, students create a PowerPoint presentation at home on a newer version and then come to school and cannot retrieve the presentation because the classroom computer does not have the same version. In addition, there are times when teachers post PowerPoint slide shows on Moodle and run into problems with the way the file is opened on the end user's computer.

Both of these issues can be resolved by saving the slide show as a PowerPoint Show. In order to do so, go to file -> save as -> and under save as type choose 'PowerPoint Show (*.pps)'.


When saved as a PowerPoint Show (.pps), the slide show can be viewed as a stand alone project. This means that the computer showing it does not need to have PowerPoint installed. You can not edit this file, so this is intended for times when you want to present the slide show, but not continue to work on it. For example, in Moodle, the presentation will load for the end user as a slide show. It will maintain all of the functionality (i.e. transitions, animation, etc) but cannot be altered. Likewise, when students (or teachers) save a presentation in this format, it can be shown as a slide show only. This should resolve some of the issues people are currently having.

When the slide show loads, it will load full screen and in order to advance, it will function like PowerPoint (i.e. you can click to advance or if it is set on automatic timing, the slide show will proceed as planned.