The tool that seems to be the most popular and supported is Animoto, which is the tool I will be focusing on this week.
Source: http://thephotographeracademy.com/assets/uploads/images/sponsor-images/animoto679x300.png
Animoto is a(nother) cloud based service that produces slideshows from your uploaded music, videos and images. The interface was simple to use and pleasant on the eyes. Creating a free account enables you to make a 30 second slideshow with either your uploads or it's many templates. Making a last minute slideshow, while perhaps very stressful, is doable with this tool. I honestly believe it can overtake Microsoft Power Point one day as top slideshow creator, but it will take time as the app is still relatively new. It took us years to accept tablets as useful tools and this likely will not be much different. In order to get there, some changes will likely have to be made in terms of subscription fees. 5 dollars a month is far too expensive for something you will seldom use. As a student, I am not really interested in paying these fees for a school project when PowerPoint is readily available and a 30 second slideshow is not nearly sufficient to give a meaningful presentation. Once they introduce a more realistic and affordable payment scheme (ie. free), I may hop on the wagon.
I think the the ability to embed video and gifs into the slideshow is awesome, though others may view it as nothing more than a gimmick.
As a 4th year student, my days of presentations are largely over. I was not even in a presentation heavy program to begin with. While this is a nifty tool, I am uncertain if I will ever need it. If a course decides to surprise me with the task of creating a slideshow or presentation of sorts, I would probably still not use it as a 30 second slideshow is not enough to get the point of a topic across to a classroom of people. I don't exactly make slideshows on a regular basis, so this tool is largely useless to me. If I need to make a slideshow in a pinch, I have Google Docs.
Animoto will not be making it to my PLE. While I am intrigued by it and the concept of the service is neat, there are too many conditions and reasons this tool is simply impractical for a student.
This week's Feedly contribution comes from gaming blog Kotaku. In it, writer Patricia Hernandez (who I am not a very big fan of) posts a video from PBS Idea Channel. As we all know, internet memes have taken the internet (go figure) by storm. These days, no matter where you go, they're damn near inescapable. From Bad Luck Brian to "never doing leg day" gym memes, some of them are funny, some were never funny, some you just got sick of. This video attempts to explain when and why memes stop being funny. I started watching it and after a while, noticed he was going in circles about the same ideas. Then I looked at how long the video was. 10+ minutes...
Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWIOhrCWJnOu7oRNaAU-48aFGqZzZe77h9ifPfGQeX9cCZ3Jqt2H_yVEr-90ItVK_wtl2AGlr_8eRm13k3IyQKCIRh57BJ9EAtQTDF_e3y7mUbT7u-HAgE2lCT58VYddyWxb-Ez6wDY4r2/s1600/ed-nortan-laptop.gif
If you want a great explanation that takes you 5 seconds to comprehend, I'll give you one. Why don't we hear Gangnam Style on the radio anymore?
If you want to be pseudo intellectual and indulge yourself, feel free to watch the video below that I've taken the courtesy to embed.
Have a good week everybody :)
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