Creaza

Creaza is a site I learned about from Larry Ferlazzo's wonderful blog, and it is a bit complicated to say the least. However, once you spend the time looking it over you'll notice that there is a lot of useful tools to be found.

Basically, Creaza is a multi-media suite (vaguely similar to Adobe's) which lets users create: cartoons, Movies, and Mind Maps. Their site states, "Creaza offers you an integrated, web-based toolbox for creative work, both at school and in your free time. You use the toolbox along with various fully developed thematic universes: historicalperiods, fairy-tales, fantasy worlds, and current challenges, such as climate/environment."

Another great aspect to Creaza is the "web 2.0" features which lets users: share, publish, comment, in a secure environment. The only downside is, there is no built in filtering going on. This leads to a tricky issue when dealing w/ CIPA compliance. While a user can potentially swear/bully, they have people monitoring all content so it will get removed and the user will be punished.

Below is a short breakdown of each area of Creaza:


Cartoonist - complicated cartoon creator which had me scratching my head just to add a speech bubble. However, there is a lot here and has a great deal of potential.



Movie Editor - has a similar look to iMovie 09 or Boinx TV. It has the ability to create nice visual mash-ups w/ pre-set: graphics, video, effects, etc.



Mindomo - is a lot like any other graphic organizer/mind mapping tool. Not as simple as drag/drop (my sub-topics kept getting stuck) but there are some good things to be found here.



I highly suggest giving Creaza a try, you'll be glad that you did. Click here for more info...