Animoto

Do you have a lot of ‘tech tools’ in your toolbox? Over the years I’ve used a wide variety of tech tools in my job as a librarian and technology coordinator. As a retiree, I’m using some of those same tools as an amateur genealogist and blogger.

Recently, I dug into my toolbox from over 10 years ago to see whether the Animoto website still existed. To my amazement, it not only still exists but it still has a free version. With Animoto, I can quickly turn a group of photos into a video. I used the free version (Animoto branding and all) to create simple videos using photos taken of various exhibits in the Nemaha County Historical Society’s museums.

For these projects I

• Identified a group of photos
• Selected an Animoto theme
• Uploaded the photos
• Entered a title
• Changed the background song on one of the videos but used the default song on the other two
• Let Animoto create my video at 720p
• Downloaded the completed video
• Uploaded the video to one of the historical society’s YouTube (Google for nonprofits) accounts
• Shared the videos on Facebook (and now via this blog)

It’s super easy and relatively fast. Try it for yourself with some of your family photos!