I am using some examples from Fusion Charts, a site with open source resources for creating flash-animated graphs. I like the bar graphs because the animations make sense, especailly when showing growth and quantity.

I dislike the line graphs because the way the graph gets drawn does not really represent the change over time. If you click on one of the examples. you'll see that the animation looks nice, but does not really make any sense or make the argument more persuasive.

Check out some of their examples and decide which graphs a static image would make more sense than the animation that has been provided.

I like that this instructional video takes a very complicated combination of physical movements and breaks it down to its smallest parts. The text, narration, and video elements work well together.  I also like the occasional arrow annotations. I also appreciate the background music and the fact that the video is so short.  While it feels rushed at points, it is very easy to pause and rewind and go back so I am ok with that.

The embedding may not be allowed so click the "Watch on YouTube" link or just click here. I have not yet tried these instructions myself, but I think I can do it!

I actually am kind of tired of videos with text statistics, cutesy graphics, and dramatic music. However, I think there is an interesting learning opportunity if students are guided to think about the way messages are presented in multimedia formats. You can take pretty mundane facts and make them seem far more important than they actually are with some creative editing. Below is a quick video made with some random statistics I found on some websites (not verified at all!). This might be a fun activity for students to see how they can convey different messages simply by changing the way that information is