Thing #11

Discovering Presentation Tools

Newton's Laws & Sports - Kizoa Video Editor - Movie Maker

I was already pretty familiar with Prezi and Animoto, so I decided to give Kizoa a try. This tool is a pretty neat took after you learn all of its features. I spent longer than I wanted to creating a simple video for an introduction to an upcoming assignment. Instead of using powerpoint to present the assignment, I created a Kizoa. I think my kids will appreciate the music, flash, and images. You can view the video above. The actual assignment is for the students to chose a sport and relate it to all 3 laws of motion. I know it seems basic, but until I play around some more, it was taking me quite a while to figure things out. Although I could have googled or youtubed it, I am more of the exploratory type and learn better when I actually get my hands wet and make mistakes. I do not think it was that user friendly initially, but once you get the hang of things, it is just repetition. I did like that images and other video clips could be imported fairly easy. I did not like the font choices or designs. I wanted just plain text over my images, but I could not figure out how to do that. It seems as though you are just limited to what is there. I also could not figure out how to make the music seamless. I had to drop the music in every frame, so each time there is a transition, the music stops and then starts again. Regardless of the few dislikes, it is still a pretty cool free tool that can be used to enhance classroom instruction. I think that as educators we need to add more variety in our delivery of instruction to better engage our students. I have my students create various products throughout the year and this will be another tool I will share with them as a choice to use.