Welcome to our first WebQuest!  A WebQuest is a journey through the internet, following links, completing tasks and discovering more about the internet and our topic - amazing animals.   I'm really excited to share this adventure with you and I hope you'll enjoy your quest.  Your challenge, should you choose to undertake it, is to go on safari to discover all about animals - where they live, their life cycles, what they eat, what eats them, their relationships to other animals and many other interesting facts.  So grab your zoologist gear - binoculars, hat and attire and let's fire up that jeep and head off into the amazing world of animals!

Educational Value of Animoto

I'm such a photo bug.  I love taking pictures, editing and creating slide shows and books and Animoto is right up my alley.  Animoto offers pictures to choose from in their library or you can use pictures you've taken or gotten off the Web.  For my amazing animals video I used mostly pictures I have taken.  The one of the cheetah, however, is from the Animoto library.  I wish I could get that close to a cheetah!   You can also tailor the music to fit the topic.  If you were doing a religious studies unit you could use one of the gospel music choices.  If it was a more solomn piece there's music to fit that mood.   I'm doing my WebQuest on amazing animals so I chose a fast paced style of music.  And if you don't like their music choices or have a specific music in mind you can upload your own music.  I imagine if you recorded your class or yourself singing, playing music or talking, you could upload it to Animoto as well as long as it fit their parameters of under 10 minutes and 10MB.  There is also  a multitude of styles you can choose from to fit your theme and you can add text.  The free version allows for 30 second long videos but if you buy it you can get more choices and longer videos.  The uses for Amimoto in education are incredible.  You could use them to highlight literature topics, books, science, math, social studies, history, class projects and ideas.  You can use them to introduce a topic or at the end of a lesson or to highlight specific parts during the lesson.  Having found Animoto, I think I'll be using it for all sorts of things.  Here's my Animoto on amazing animals, check out the mammals at the end - Enjoy!