For doing a video to show a 6th grader what the design cycle really is there are many webpages that I can use and that kids will enjoy. I chose Clipgenerator because it looked simple to use and I thought could catch the eye of a kid. When I entered the webpage, I scanned through it and found different things you could choose from. Event though it seemed easy, in simplicity I rated this a 3 because this page is more professional like, for example something a college student would use to do their project. Since I'm trying to teach a 6th grader I thought this wouldn't be as simple to explain to them.
When it is about theme choices, you think that you need many of them, and creative ones also, so it can be fun. When I went into this to get a tutorial, I immediately looked for the different themes that I could use. When I saw that there was 10 different ones, with just posting pictures, I liked the idea. I thought, how can I reach my goal by showing pictures. Since I am a student, I put myself in that position. Do I really want to watch a video with just pictures without anything else? No, I wanted to create something interesting and I thought that watching pictures of the design cycle wouldn't be as fun. Since there was 10 themes but only pictures, this is why I rated Theme Choices a 1.
When I saw that the theme was just posting the pictures, I knew that there were not going to be any characters but the people or things in the pictures. This didn't seem as a good idea. I wanted something where kids could remember the characters and quotes. That is why I rated this a 1. I would later on look for something that could really interest the kids and myself.
In font choices, I give a rating of 2. The idea of this video, as I learn, is to JUST show pictures. I looked for various choices of fonts but nothing comes out. This is why I rated a 2. I understand the idea of the pictures showing but I would also like to explain. If not, you could just watch it but not pay attention.
What I really liked about the Clipgenerator is the music choices. Like most of the video making pages, you either have to download your music in it, or choose from the lame songs there. Here there are about 10 choices of different songs, but this music is the popular music that the kids and adolescents want to hear. This is why I rated the music choices a 5.
In total, I rated the clipgenerator in general with a 12 out of 25. I added all the scores and decided that it was a reasonable score for this page. I thought I would look for something else that I could enjoy generating and demonstrating.
GoAnimate
GoAnimate was my second option for this project. I chose this as another choice because when I entered the website it looked fun, I thought it would maybe interest a 6th grader.
After I created a log in account I played and tried to create a video just to examine the process and that way be able to rate it on simplicity. The setup of the video making is very simple. There are tabs for everything and the tutorial explains step by step what you have to do to accomplish the making of the video. This video website is simple to use. I rated it a 4 because there are still many buttons I'm not familiar with. I still need to play a little more to really learn how to handle the buttons and create an exemplary video.
When it is about choosing different themes, there are about 6 - 8 different places or settings. The characters can be inserted in a coffe house, living room, bedroom, and other places. This is something to think about, I want to choose a setting that can really show or help the student understand and concentrate on what the characters are talking about. The option of 6 thru 8 different layouts helped me take the decision of rating it a 5. Because of the many different things I can choose, I think this is excellent.
Characters are a big part of the video I have to implement. That is why I looked very closely into this subject. I learned that, starting out, you need to chose between girl or boy. Then you can change their hair, face, clothes, and many other things. This is what interested me from the making of the characters. I thought that it would be fun for me to create a unique character and show it to the kids. Probably, I could make a funny person and make the 6th graders laugh. I was about to grade it a 5, but then I found out that for some choices of character traits, including hair, eyes, clothes, and everything else, you needed to pay for them. So not everything is for free. Everything else is fine, that is why I rated characters a 4.
What the characters will say is probably the most important thing on the video because this is what the 6th graders will be learning the design cycle from. What the characters say, their script, I inserted it under the fonts column. I rated this a 5 because you can chose to write whatever you want your character to say. The best part of it is that the character will pronounce it, sometimes, in a different way, which makes some phrases catchy. Making the phrases catchy will help the kid remember and repeat the sentence over and over again so they, unconsciously, will learn the design cycle.
There are not many different music choices, but there are different tones or background music you can add. I liked this because it can help the 6th grader concentrate on the words of the character, not the lyrics to the songs. This is why I rated it a 3, even though there is different tones, I would like more freedom in the background noises so it could seem more real. This would also interest the 6th graders more than just hearing hollow voices talking without any noise but that, I would think of this as very annoying.
In total, GoAnimate has a final score of 21. I refer to this website as a great place to create an animated video, and I think this is one of the best ways to explain to them the design cycle. The cute little characters and the animated and colorful setting, I think, would be the best way to catch the 6th graders eye. I will probably choose this website to create my project because, in my opinion, it is way more interesting and fun than clipgenerator.
