Slideroll.com's Demise and Rockin' Slide Shows for the Blog with OneTrueMedia.com!

A week ago, I really wanted to embrace this piece of webware....but can't. Both my students and myself had problems with this online app for making slide shows. In my last post, I noted that it has many impressive features. It still does. At first, I felt it was pretty good, but overall, the webware has some reliability issues. Glitches exist when trying to get back into slide shows you've not yet finished. Many of us using it got messages to log in after we'd already logged in. If the webware can't see that you're logged in, you get access only to the demo mode in the slide show creator portion (not good). I had a heck of a time getting back into slide shows that I produced days earlier to get the embedding code for my blog. Guess this is the bottom line - -- Slideroll has some great features, but it is not as user-friendly and reliable as I really want it to be. That is enough to send me looking for another alternative -- and what a find I've got next to tell you about! I told my students that maybe it was for the best, because we might have not have found and tried this next gem without the frustrations of Slideroll.com.

Enter Onetruemedia.com. This was the alternative we went to after acknowledging that Slideroll.com wasn't cutting it for us on this project. I had seen it only once before, but had not the real time to take it for a whirl. After having used it extensively (see one of my end projects using it), I am hooked, as are many of my students!! So many nice features to list, and, have to let you know, many of my students like it better than Animoto.com because of it's intuitive feel, speed, features, ultimate control -- and yes -- firm reliability! This online app for making slide shows has a really friendly, easy to use interface, especially the storyboard area where you stage the order of your slides. Important for us was finding webware that would allow us to program each slide's duration so that we could get that emotional feel established via text or pictures. This program has it. Additionally, it comes with a handful of nice slide transitions, a large list of free music, the ability to upload purchased ITunes music (a student shared this find with me -- I've yet to try this feature) and the ability to create text slides on the fly as you work (though the default font size is a bit small -- and you find that to make your font larger on your text slides you have to upgrade to their premium service). And, this service lets user integrate video along with pictures -- something I'd not seen in other similar online apps. Does it have any flaws? Well yes -- my slide show was a bit choppy when loading for the first time on my blog, but hey, it's a 3+ minutes slide show, so I expected a bit of streaming issues (do wish it would stay on the preloader just a little longer so as to avoid streaming "jerks"). Also, while you have the ability to add text captions to images, you have to upgrade (i.e. "pay") for that service just as you have to pay for enlarged text on text slides. But reliability, speed when creating a project, and choice of features are not among the list of flaws at all! Was so impressed at how I could have about 15 students working on this online app at the same time in our lab and it still cranked along nicely without getting the 'ol bandwidth choke. Projects save nicely, embed into Blogger nicely and most of all, let students tell the digital story they want because of its features. Would rate it a 9/10!! Still hope to post in a few days regarding how Animoto.com performed for us.

Animoto, SlideRoll, Digital Storytelling and Resulting Smiles

The semester has flown by, despite a rocky start with sharing web 2.0 technologies with my students. After the first six weeks, and after personally resolving to push forward with my plan to expose students to blogs, RSS feeds, aggregators, webware and more - things began to fall into place and gradually flow more smoothly. As you might remember, I experienced many frustrations initially because of issues with our new district server which would not permit blogs or web pages to instantly update. Though I still have a few hurdles to jump (getting the powers that be to let me use VOIP in my classroom), I am looking back at this whole last 18 weeks and thinking the struggle was worth it. I became demoralized at times; it was such a solo-flight-feeling at times. I kept going, however, by reading the blogs of others, by seeking out what other professionals in the realm of K-12 education were doing with these same topics (thank goodness for Netvibes and other RSS aggregators at times like these).

We are now down to our last week, and my students are working on their last project in regards to their blog topics. As their last Web 2.0 assignment, students are to create a digital story about their blog topic using either Animoto or SlideRoll, both pretty impressive pieces of webware. What led me to offering just these two services in this final project? Well, first and foremost, I needed online services/webware not blocked by our school district. Secondly, each needed to be capable producing an embeddable "digital story" for our final blog experience.

Animoto.com - Very impressive site (actually dubbed as the "death of the slide show") which allows students to upload and arrange images, as well as select or upload music to create a digital story that is a cross between a music video and a slide show. Once the images and music are selected/uploaded, their server does the rest -- the beat of the music is analyzed and the images are animated accordingly. The site describes their services as follows:

"Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Produced on a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer."

Animoto has a serious "wow" factor and I saw lots of grins on student faces when I showed them a few demos and what was possible. Graciously, this online service offers all registered users free 30 sec. creations, but to be honest, it's pretty hard to tell a "digital story" in that amount of time. I contacted the powers that be at Animoto, asking if I could purchase a year subscription under my teacher name (only $30 for unlimited movie making), but more importantly, get their blessing so that any of my students could use this teacher account if he/she needed to produce a longer-than-30 sec. video to tell his/her story. I was stunned in that they responded within one day with a "yes"! So not only do they have an amazing product (Google's been talking to them, I read), I'd say their customer service has to be right up there with some of the best!

However, "telling a story" using Animoto.com has a few drawbacks. If fast, upbeat music is used, slide duration/transitions will occur accordingly. If you need your viewers to read textual slides/images, this poses a problem. Work around, use slower music; Animoto currently does not allow users to determine how long each slide gets viewed (except that you can "spotlight" certain slides which helps emphasize certain slides) and thus the drawback. Understandably, slower music isn't for all projects and some students want that more intense, driving music behind their message. One other work around would be to eliminate the use of textual slides, and instead use Audacity to record an audio story while more driving music runs in the background (produce this as one single .mp3 to upload and use). A last option? Use SlideRoll.com.

SlideRoll.com proves less "hip" in its animation, but it offers powerful user control. Users can tell a digital story with precise control over each slide's duration and transition effect. Included are some nice Ken Burns pan and zoom effects. So while this service gives great control over how the story gets produced and allows users to make at least 10 more lengthy slide shows for free (100 pictures max), there are a few down sides. SlideRoll allows music to accompany your presentation, but you must choose from their limited selection of music. Really, this isn't that much of a creativity stifler, but students need to know this up front. Finished slide shows embed nicely in Blogger accounts if students use the "simple embed code".

Hope to report back in a week to see how many students used each one and what their reactions/experiences were like. Until then, wish us happy digital storytelling as we wrap up our semester. :)