Cool Tool Review #1 - GoAnimateforSchools

I'm not gonna lie, this website was not nearly as fun to play with as I had hoped. I mean, making cool little animations, adding voices and text, and bringing a lesson to life sounds like a fun way to do class prep, but I'm not convinced this is the right tool for doing it.

On the one hand, GoAnimateforSchools seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about the safety of K12 students with intense privacy settings and PG content for animations, which I'm sure would be reassuring for many educators. That security comes at a cost, however, with teacher accounts (meaning the teacher can make videos to show students but students don't get to make their own videos) running $79/year. If I were to subscribe for both myself and enough logins for all of the 125 students I typically teach in a year, it would cost me $447/year for the Higher Ed version or $298/year for the K-12 version. In other words, teachers better bring their grant-writing skills to the table. They do offer a two week free trial for a teacher and 50 students, so an instructor could test it out with students to see if there is any merit to it, but videos made during the trial can't be shared beyond the closed group.

You know, unless you know how to make a screencast on screencast-o-matic.

I worked way too hard, for way too long, to create this ridiculously short video. I had thought I would make multiple videos using the three different types they offer (Business Friendly, Whiteboard Animations, and Video Infographics), but life is too short to keep messing with a software that doesn't automatically save changes and wouldn't let me return directly to the edit page after previewing my video. 

With enough time spent reading the sites blogs, doing tutorials, and exploring samples of what others have made and used the program to teach, it could be an okay tool, but I am not prepared to invest that much time into something that may not be worthwhile. I'm hoping some of the video and animation tools that others in this class are reviewing will prove to be more user friendly at a lower cost, both of time and money.