Animoto is one of those sites that I have heard about and used for a while, but never wrote about. So here goes.

Animoto is a very cool site that allows you to create video slideshows. The free version does have a limit of 30 second videos but the Plus plan is only $5 per month and has full length videos. There are more expensive plans that include more functionality also.

You select images and musics and video clips and then Animoto organizes them into a video slideshow. You can also share your slideshows through a variety of social media sites and there are some nice design backgrounds to choose from.

UPDATE: there is a free Animoto Plus account for educators. It removes the 30 second limit you get on a normal free account and allows you to create student accounts. See it at http://animoto.com/education 

I recently found out about Stump the Teacher, a blog by Josh Stumpenhorst, and the excellent collection of tutorial videos he has on the blog.

The videos are well done and easy to follow and understand. Topics include: Google Docs, Blogger, Greenscreen, Twitter, Evernote, and more.

These are great for people who want to get started with any of these tools, or even learn a few new things.

Definitely a resource to add to your list of great, on-demand, tech professional development sites.

Earlier today I posted about VLC Media Player, which can play, and convert, most video and audio formats. Sometimes you just want a simple video conversion software to convert video formats so that you can play the video on different devices and systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile deviceHere are three:



FLV Converter - converts Flash FLV video files to other formats (including Windows Media, .avi, and mpeg-4. Videos on many websites, including YouTube (for now) are in the FLV format. This format doesn't play well all the time and many video players can play it. If you download videos from YouTube or other sites, you may have to convert them to be usable.




WM Converter - another easy to use video converter. Converts from almost any format to almost any other format. You can also convert multiple files in the same session, so you can "set it and forget it" (sorry Ronco).



Any Video Converter - simple, easy to use, powerful video conversion.This one can also clip, sort, and merge video clips to create a new movie and can also crop the frame. This has saved me a few times when other converters just wouldn't convert a file. It also can convert with better quality many times.


All of these are great options if you need to convert video files.

Video is an important part of life and education. We use videos in class for a variety of reasons. Videos come in many different formats too. It's no fun to need to have 3 or 4 different video players (Windows Media Player, Real, Quicktime) to play them all. While most of them can play formats that others can, I've run into problems with all of them. Some videos won't play on them at all, and others are lower quality. Solution: VLC Multimedia Player.







VLC Multimedia Player is a free, open-source, video and audio player that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols. 


VLC Multimedia Player is easy to use and starts up quickly.  It can play video and audio files, DVD, CD and VCD and can play streaming video. It rarely needs any additional downloads to play most videos. 


You can also use it to convert video and audio files to other formats (especially handy for converting certain formats to be able to upload them to a website or use on a mobile device).


VLC Multimedia Player is free, easy to use, and very powerful.  It is available for Windows, 10 different versions of Linux, Mac, iOS,  and Unix. 


Screenshot on my system.


You can see more screenshots here.