As a usual assignment, my Introduction to Computers class needs to create a multimedia presentation on one of the topics covered in the class and embed the presentation into their blogs.

The students usually enjoy this assignment very much especially since I always have them use the Animoto Multimedia Web 2.0 site is which is free to use and also provides royalty free music that can added to the presentation. If you are not familiar with this site, check it out here: Http://www.animoto.com.

Well, 2 weeks ago during the last class day, one of my students had a wonderful story to share with me. Apparently for the last two years, he has had a business working from home creating personal memory videos for people to show at anniversaries, retirement and weddings parties and memorial videos for funerals.

Lately he has been unable to keep up with the demand and was planning to hire someone to help him out with his business. He had been using a movie editing software to create the movies which had a really high learning curve and is not very user friendly. Therefore, it was a very time consuming task to create each video.

He wanted me to know that I really helped his business out tremendously since one of the options on the Animoto site allow businesses to buy a yearly membership and use the site for business purposes.

He bought a years membership and since then has been able to cut the amount of time he spends to create the videos in half and no longer plans to hire anyone to help him out. He has also managed to double his productivity.

Wow, this made my whole day. Not only had I educated the student as far as Computers are concerned, but by introducing him to this site, I was able to help his personal business grow.

I guess educators will sometimes will never know the full implications of an ordinary class assignment. In this case, my assignment did more for this student than I ever imagined. It is stories like this that just reinforce my love for teaching.