Tech Tool of the Week: GoAnimate

This week's featured technology tool is a terrific, easy-to-use tool for creating animated videos called GoAnimate. 

GoAnimate allows users to quickly and easily make videos consisting of animated characters. It features easy-to-use drag and drop tools and libraries filled with a variety of characters, props, backgrounds, and music. You can create your own characters and record yourself speaking, or use text-to-speech actors in over 20 languages. There is nothing to draw or download; everything is ready for you to use. Story lines can be as simple or complex as you wish, and with so many different options it is easy to differentiate for different students' needs.

Here at Chinese American International School, several of our Mandarin teachers are using GoAnimate with their students to create digital stories in Chinese. In our 5th grade Chinese classes, students recently completed a unit that focused on vocabulary related to the idea of "lost and found": losing an item and then trying to find it. Students created a dialogue in which one character loses an item and has to question other characters to try to find the missing item. After composing their scripts, students created a GoAnimate video to bring their skit to life. While GoAnimate does not support Pinyin input, students were able to copy the Chinese text from the typed version of their script and paste it into speech bubbles in their GoAnimate videos. The final step was to record their own voices reading the script. Using GoAnimate adds new dimensions to a project that was once strictly paper-and-pencil based. It allows children to creatively express their ideas, practice speaking Chinese, and create a final product that can be easily shared with a wider audience. Check out some samples of the finished products below!

What could you use GoAnimate for in your classroom? GoAnimate videos would be great for flipped classrooms, teacher lessons, student presentations, creating video tutorials, creative writing, and more. Here is a list of some other ways that schools around the globe are using GoAnimate with their students.

GoAnimate includes both a free and a paid version. It also offers special school subscriptions that allow teachers to set up classes and student accounts, keep student work private (if desired), monitor and review student work, allow downloading and sharing only with teacher approval, give kids access to characters/backgrounds/props that are school safe, and more. Our school subscribed for a site license. For more information on GoAnimate for Schools, click here.

To learn more about how to create a GoAnimate video, check out GoAnimate's YouTube playlist of "How-To's and Tutorials". Below is a short tutorial that includes a brief introduction to GoAnimate: