Comment

Comment by Rev. Dennis Borchers on November 8, 2011 at 7:46am

Dear Judy,

I have opened up the access to my classes "Go Animate comic strips" for you. They are under the 3rd, 4th and 6th Hour Freshman Religion Classes page. Use them to your hearts content.

Comment by Judy Arzt on November 7, 2011 at 9:04pm

Dear Rev Dennis Borchers, Are the students' digital citizenship Go Animate comic strips still available? I could not find the link any longer on the school's website? Thanks.

Comment by Rev. Dennis Borchers on October 6, 2011 at 7:18am

Dear Judy,

Yes, by all means you may use some of my students' projects to show your classes and the class website as well. I am using the Weebly Pro version for the website. I thought that it was worth the money to use Weebly's extra features to make the site more engaging.

Comment by Judy Arzt on October 5, 2011 at 11:40pm

Rev. Dennis,

I just looked at a couple of the Go Animate videos, and I can see that if students have an organized project, as they did, they can use the site to communicate a message through the audio and visual. I also noticed you use Weebly for your school site. Which version do you have? Do you mind if I show the school site and some of the Go Animate videos to students in My Computers in the Classroom graduate course at Saint Joseph College, CT? Some of the students might be motivated to use GoAnimate. They can try a free trial for a course project, and then decide if this is another Web 2.0 tool they want to integrate into their teaching. I appreciate your sharing in this thread. 

Gary, I will follow your advice. Students have a project in the class wherein they select a Web 2.0 tool to learn and demo and teach us. They have already done some of these projects, but more are on the way, and I will push for Go Animate. It is already on the list, and in the past, a few students did review the site. I guess it is time to promote it again.

 

Thank you to both of you for posting your comments. In fact, engaging in this conversation is another way of demonstrating how online collaboration across borders is enabled by Web 2.0 tools like Ning. 

 

 

Comment by Gary Lipkowitz on October 5, 2011 at 5:13pm

Hi all - I'd just like to clarify a few points about GoAnimate and GoAnimate 4 Schools.

GoAnimate 4 Schools is the educational platform. It is for use when each of the students in a classroom setting will be creating videos. For this purpose, it has privacy, security, group management and content moderation features built in.

This is a subscription product, albeit one priced on a steep educational discount. Simon has quoted the price (and TIE special) correctly. All accounts on the Schools platform have "GoPlus" subscriber privileges, including unlimted use, unlimted video length, extended text to video credits and the ability to import images.

It sounds like Rev. Dennis' students have each created their own free accounts on the consumer platform GoAnimate.com. This is OK by us, but as a mass product, we can't promise all the creative assets are appropriate for schools (ie: guns, swords). Nor can we block your students from viewing any of the several million videos on the site. For this you'd need to be in the private, secure Schools platform. We do recommend that K-12 educators using GoAnimate in the classroom use GoAnimate 4 Schools.

@Judy - since you are teaching graduate courses, you don't need to be on the GoAnimate 4 Schools platform. I suggest you follow Rev. Dennis' lead and have your teacher candidates simply register for free accounts on GoAnimate.com. There is no time limit to the free accounts. They will last forever.

The comparison table of Basic (free) vs. Plus is here:
http://goanimate.com/pluscomparison/

Comment by Rev. Dennis Borchers on October 3, 2011 at 10:09am

Dear Judy,

 

I teach at Concordia Lutheran High School in Fort Wayne, IN. At the present time I am teaching Freshman and Sophomore religion classes. I used the "Go Animate" site for a Freshman project where they were to identify a problem using the Internet (like illegally downloading music) and then solve the problem from a Christian perspective. If you would like to see the project and their work go to our class website www.pastorborchersreligionclasses.weebly.com

Go to the "3rd, 4th & 6th Hour Freshman" button, open up "Digital Comic Strips" , scroll down, and open up one of the animations and see for yourself.

Comment by Judy Arzt on October 3, 2011 at 9:57am

Rev. Dennis, what do you teach and what kinds of projects did students do with Go Animate?

Comment by Rev. Dennis Borchers on October 3, 2011 at 7:38am

Dear Judy,

Yes, my students were able to access the site to do their work. Of course their projects could only be a certain length because the "free stuff" has limits. However, it was enough to do what needed to be done.

Comment by Judy Arzt on October 2, 2011 at 11:43pm

Rev. Dennis, were your students able to get free accounts for an extended period of time?

Comment by Judy Arzt on October 2, 2011 at 11:42pm

I teach graduate courses to teaches, and I don't have a budget and can't say all students in the classes would find Go Animate worth the expense. As much as I would like to show it to some of the teachers in the course, I would not be showing it to enough and they would not use it enough for us to pay the fee. I had to pull arms to get free subscriptions to Ning, and it is not easy for those teaching at small colleges to get funding for subscriptions to sites like Go Animate. I have used the trial period, and a few of my students have, and they like the tool, but again, they claim their schools would not pay for the subscription. I realize it is a worthwhile site, nonetheless, and teachers should see it an use it. I also campaigning for VoiceThread, which also has a fee. Can stretch self funding just so far.

Comment by Simon Harrison on October 2, 2011 at 5:00pm

Can't believe Judy is whinnying about the cost!

- You can try it for free

- It is only $79 for 50 users - surely easily within the bounds of a teachers discretional spend and not so great to have to be signed off by the head or educational board?!  

Comment by Rev. Dennis Borchers on October 2, 2011 at 4:25pm

I am currently using this great tool in my classes. All of my students have signed up for the free accounts and they did some pretty amazing presentations with it. I recommend this tool and encourage its use in the classroom.

Comment by Judy Arzt on October 1, 2011 at 2:08pm

As much as I like this tool, I am inhibited from showing it to my graduate students, who are teachers for two reasons: (1) I don't have funding to pay for a subscription for the class, and (2) I am not sure if their school systems will support funding if teachers don't see the product and can convince administrators it is worth the fee. Thus, I tend to showcase only tools that are free or have a free trial period. Teachers need to use the tools first before they decide if they want to invest in them. I guess that eliminates any further encouragement of Go Animate, although I have it listed as one Web 2.0 too for teachers to explore in various posts on my blog. I do that to let teachers know the tool exists, but they then never get to use it my class per se.