With graduations and grade level promotions only a few weeks away, many teachers and students enjoy looking back at all the amazing things that happened during the year.  If you’re a photo-nut like me, you’ve been taking pictures of field trips, special projects, silly students and comforting colleagues nearly every day.  What better way to archive them at the end of the year, than to create a video keepsake for your class?

Tip #1 –  Don’t Move the Cheese.  Create a folder on your desktop and name it Video Keepsake. Save copies of all of your photos in this folder.  Do not move or delete this folder until your project is 100% completely finished.

Tip #2 – Animoto, Animoto, Animoto.   Be serious.  You don’t have time to load 300 photos into some software and then customize all the transitions, and mess with adding titles by hand.  Let a photo slideshow site like Animoto.com do all the heavy lifting for you!  Animoto will customize all the flashy transitions and make adding text and music a breeze so you don’t ever have to sweat the details.

New to Animoto? Visit Animoto’s sign up page for Educators 

Need to Renew your Animoto Educational Account? Your Educational Accounts expire every six months, so you’ll need a new code to renew your account.  You can re-apply for a new code and extended access by visiting animoto’s education page.  Once you’ve received the code you have 1 month to share it with students and colleagues (it’s good for 50 accounts – Hello Student Project!!)

Never seen an Animoto video? Check out the memories Jane Long Elementary made during their 2010 “Pie In the Face” Contest:

 Tip #5 – Start Now  With a project that’s as close to your heart as this one is, you’ll want to give yourself enough time.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done plenty projects like this the night before I absolutely HAD to have them done, but it’s pretty stressful.  Do yourself a favor and start now so that you can slide right into summer without an ounce of stress – and earn countless “#1 Teacher” mugs, pens, and totebags along the way.

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