Trying animoto

I have been looking this week at animoto. The program seems simple enough to use, but I am not sold on the functionality for the text based classes I teach. The videos on the site are a nice way of digital storytelling and could be used in introducing a concept or summarizing what was learned. But I do not see how it could be used in the learning process of a text based class, has anyone done this? The free version also seems very limited in the same way as a thirty second clip might be good for an introduction or motivational point, but seems limited in its ability to present a greater topic. It seems to me that this is a great tool for making slideshows come alive and turn pictures more into stories, but its application to the classroom seems limited. Students could use video to demonstrate mastery over a topic, see a Judaics example at https://sites.google.com/a/mhafyos.org/letters/home but this too is using student generated video as a project and not teacher generated video as part of instruction.