Creaza

Creaza

Creaza is a web 2.0 tool that allows teachers and students to create content specific movies, comics, pictures, audio files, and graphic organizers. This program offers excellent potential for teaching and learning.

**Resources:**

[|Creaza Education Blog]

[|Student Example]


 * Strengths **

To begin with, there are no software downloads and a demo program is free. The four creative tools allow theCreaza to be used for many different projects. It is also an intuitive program that, in my opinion, is more user-friendly for younger children than iMovie or Garageband. All a user needs is Internet access, a web browser, and the Flash plug-in. Creaza works with P.C., Mac, and Linux operating systems. Each of the four tools in the suite has video tutorials to help students learn the programs quickly. Students can upload up to 25MB their own media files to use within the various tools. Finally, because it was made with educators in mind Creaza allows for easy grading of assignments. All the teacher needs is the homepage URL (which is easy to locate on the homepage) and the teacher can view all shared projects and then post a comment with feedback.

The free version of Creaza does not provide all the resources that the premium version has to offer, such as more storage space and additional themes in Cartoonist, as well as being able to record your own voice. Right now, Creaza is still missing a Help section for the AudioEditor, but according to the site it is expected to be available soon.
 * Weaknesses: **


 * Opportunities: **

Imagine a classroom in which students are highly engaged working away on their iMovie’s for a social studies unit. Then the bell rings. Suddenly, the room erupts in “man!”, “is it time already?” and “I wish I could work on this at home!” Well, with Creaza students can work on their projects at home. Learning can now continue outside the classroom walls. Students also have the choice of displaying what they have learned in multiple formats.

**Threats/potential issues:**

Users can choose if they want to share their creations with others and get feedback. As always users have to be careful with what is shared over the Internet. However, a safe card that Creaza installed is that friends and teachers can only see what projects have been shared if the homepage URL is provided.

**Ideas for the Classroom:**


 * 1) Use Cartoonist to allow students to create cartoon versions of the books they have read.
 * 2) Students can also take on roles of figures in their books, in history, in science and record interviews between the figures using the AudioEditor.
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">If you’re looking for a new way for students to present information from science, social studies, or language arts students can create professional looking presentations with <span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: 'arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Creaza  <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">.
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Mindomo is a great tool to help students plan out stories or to visually connect their knowledge. Then after students have created their projects they can embed their final creations into the classroom blog for others to enjoy.