Blog on the Synthesizing Mind

Blog on the Synthesizing Mind

A resource that I would use if I were currently teaching in the classroom is Animoto, which is found at www.animoto.com.  Animoto is a Web 2.0 technology that allows anyone to easily create videos which incorporate templates, or styles that you can select from the website along with using either your own, and/or pre-made music, videos and music.  The fact that it is web-based and thus doesn’t require any software to install and works cross-platform (i.e. Windows and Macintosh computers) makes it so that anyone can use it.  Best of all it is totally free to educators (you can sign up for an educator account which allows you to create a class of up to fifty students using a code that you are given upon sign up).

I signed up for an educator’s account, was approved almost instantaneously, was given my code for students to use to create the 50 free additional accounts for six months and then was quickly on my way to making a professional looking video.  You can start with a title slide (what they call a text slide) and from there you have an easy-to-use interface to change the style (i.e. template for the video), incorporate stock music or add your own music and then also add in stock photos/videos or your own photos/videos.  All the objects that you choose to integrated into your video are then placed on a timeline in the order you put them in your video project.  If you don’t like the order of the components of your video, it isn’t a problem; you simply drag them around with the mouse to re-order them.  If you have a photo that isn’t in the right orientation, you simply click on it once to highlight it and then use a rotate button to put it in the right orientation.  A duplicate button allows you to easily make a second copy of a component of your video.  If you have a photo or video you want to show extra emphasis to, you simply select it and then choose the spotlight option.

Once you’ve got a video put together, you can save it and then easily click on a button entitled ‘Preview Video’ to see what it looks like on the screen.  If you need to make alterations, additions, deletions to your video, you simply do so via the timeline and a series of buttons on the right-hand side of the screen.  Once done, you can save your video, and then post a link to the video so that it can be accessed by others online.  I think what impressed me the most about this Web 2.0 resource is that it is so incredibly easy to use and you really don’t need any kind of video editing and creation experience at all to use it.  They’ve definitely made the service so easy that anyone can be up and running and creating high quality videos in a matter of minutes.

How would one use this resource to foster the synthesizing mind in our students?  I would say that you could use Animoto to animate or illustrate research that you’ve had your students do on a particular topic or subject.  After the students have researched how to explain the process of how something is created or maybe explain how two or more unrelated items can be incorporated into one or even possibly use a video to (re)tell a story or process of how something is done or created in their own words, Animoto could be used to tie all of that together.  If we remember, the definition of synthesis from our readings is: “The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons.” (Gardner, 2006, p. 3)  So students are doing just that – they are taking multiple sources of information that are from different sources, taking all of that information, thinking about it and then putting it together from its different sources in to one item, a video, in way that not only could they the researchers understand it but it could also be understand by their teacher, classmates and anyone else that views the video.

For example, I used to teach our school’s TV Studio/Media class and as a part of that class, we used the AFI Door Scene (http://www.unitedstreaming.com/videos/42845/D2B15956-1279-3B00-CD01B9EA8FD93498.pdf) and also talked about the storyboarding process and the different kinds of shots one can take along with discussing how integrating sounds to a video can create an overall effect or emotion.  Students could easily create their own version of the Door Scene using Animoto to share with their classmates.  They could then critique their projects amongst their peers, as a class or as a school to see how they did and if they indeed did incorporate all the components needed for the Door Scene.  I think that this would be a great way to use this Web 2.0 resource to foster the synthesizing mind in our students.

Gardner, H. (2006). Five Minds for the Future. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, Massachusetts.