Introducing Yourself to Your Students

While browsing around the Web today, I came across this blog post by Melissa Seideman about using Animoto to introduce yourself to your students. Check her post: Instead of Telling Your Students Who You Are, Show Them. She suggested using Animoto to do this.

Animoto is online tool for creating quick videos by uploading saved images and then adding a soundtrack. You can also add text slides to the presentation. I have included three examples of Animoto introductions that I found on Melissa's post. Below the Animotos, I included examples from others who used additional tools for creating introductions.

I thank Melissa for this excellent suggestion and encourage following her on Twitter, where her user name is @mseideman.

Mrs. Seidman, High School Social Studies Teacher



Here is Mrs. Jee’s Video



Here is Mrs. Lindinger’s video



Here is another created with Animoto, but then uploaded to YouTube.

Meet Mr. Lee:


Here is one that was created with VoiceThread. (Excuse the comments on the first slide, which still need to be deleted.) Just go through the full VoiceThread, using the arrows as needed, or just letting the show proceed on its own.

Introduction to Jamme Freitag, Elementary School Teacher


This one was created with PhotoStory but then uploaded to Google to be placed in a Google Site. You will need to access it from a Google Site web page: Introduction to Colin Murray

Now that you have seen how teachers are using Web 2.0 and multimedia to introduce themselves, what are your thoughts on the idea? Would you consider introducing yourself to your class in this way?

On another note, I found out that Melissa uses Animoto for her students to create projects for their  history course. Check this blog post, which has a link to the assignment directions and an example  of one student's response to the project. Animoto: Video Slideshows. The text slides in this student example were created with PowerPoint, and the PowerPoint was saved as a jpeg file, so the slides could be uploaded to Animoto similar to how images (or photos) would be.

How can you see yourself using a tool like Animoto for student projects? What kinds of projects might you integrate into your own teaching?