Freemium ANIMOTO is "making awesome easier" by taking any number of videos, texts, photos, or musical selections, and producing a custom video from all the contents. It's essentially one-half basic video editor and one-half mashup/remix machine. In addition to uploading your own photos and video, and music, users may also import media from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, SmugMug, and Instagram (we'd love to see Dropbox and Google Drive added to that list). The free version of Animoto gets you a 30 second video with limited musical options and video styling, but you can fork over $2.50/month/user ($300/year for 20 students) for full-length video, expanded styling options, and the ability to download student creations. Tip o' the hat to Cathleen Ash and Renee Setser of Manor ISD.
