Creaza is a startup out of Norway that has created an accessible online platform for planning, making, and editing creative work. Their platform is available for individuals, but they target their work for schools and the educational setting. It makes good sense to host their suite in the cloud. Many schools are wary of incompatible software on aging computers, and with the online connectivitiy Creaza has also added group collaboration and social features for its mindmapping, cartoon making, video editing, and audio editing platform.
The first of the four products they offer as part of their creative suite include: Mindomo, a fairly standard mind mapping tool that helps you organize and plan your project. Mind map topics can contain media files and links, as well as text.
What seems to be the core feature of Creaza is Cartoonist, a tool to create cartoons or personal digital stories, consisting of professional backgrounds, characters, props, your personal images, and text. For a flash based editor, it seems packed with features. Between frames you can zoom in, easily change elements, and draw from many characters and situations. The idea behind it all is so students can compose multimedia stories by creating comic strips or more personal digital narratives.
In addition to that they also have MovieEditor, a full-featured timeline-based video editor, similar to traditional desktop-based video editing tools. With it, you can add titles, transitions, effects, animation, music, and narration. It looks like a very solid editor.
And a similar tool is their AudioEditor, which does your standard recording, slicing, and mixing of audio. With it, students can create podcasts, radio shows, and learn to layer audio across multiple tracks.
Giving students the initial push into media editing and creation is a great way to allow them to tap into their creativity and learn the basics of some useful skills.
Below you can find samples of Cartoonist and MovieEditor:
