BP6_2009102_Web2.0_Tools--Masher

As a part of my Action Research project, I’ve created a classroom website where I’m adding resources for students—including instructional videos.

After round one of video “quiz tips,” (which I’m really pleased with, so far, by the way) which I spent HOURS on, I thought to myself, “Why not have students do some of this work?”

I can’t really facilitate a lot of media asset creation with my whole class yet. We are generally speaking, too big to all go to the computer lab. The equipment is not really there for every student to create a video. And, furthermore, I am not really willing to give up that much rehearsal time, yet. But, I’m thinking that I should start an extra-curricular “technology committee” of interested students. They can help me come up with ideas for useful resources on our web page, and then help me create them.

Since I’m not really willing to turn my personal Mac over to these students, and since they might want to do some of this work from home anyway, I need to find some tools that will allow them to create and edit movies.

http://www.masher.com seems like a great fit.

With this free tool, users can

• ·      Upload movies, photos, and pictures.
• ·      Add text, effects, and skins to the movie.
• ·      Share their videos via e-mail or embed them into a website or blog.

Masher is very easy to use. You simply upload the music, videos, or music you want to use, and then drag files into the timeline. (Masher also offers a collection of video clips from the BBC’s Motion Gallery, images, a music library, an effect library, and video player skins that users can include in their videos.)

This tool can be used to make informative and fun videos, and possibly even digital stories. One thing that I would like to use it for is to have students create picture slide shows that go along with musical listening examples that we use in class.

One drawback that I see to this program is the lack of voiceover capabilities. It seems though, that this can be fairly easily overcome by creating recordings with other software and then uploading them.

Here's an example of a video I created in Masher:

References:
Masher. (2009). Retrieved October 7, 2009 from http://www.masher.com