How to bring this into the classroom?

I've seen folks work up these projects using a range of software, from PPT and Keynote to Adobe Flash to AfterEffects. The more complicated (and expensive) the software, the more it automates some processes to take the drudgery out of the animation. But determined animators can do with simpler software -- or groups that have an overall concept of what they are doing can divide and conquer the task.

There is a website called A Way To Teach (http://www.awaytoteach.net/) with tutorials and handouts by teachers whose classes did projects like these. You have to join and contribute enough stuff to earn 50 points before you can download the lessons and handouts, so that irritates some people. But if you are interested in contributing, you'll probably find lots of help. (Then you can come back here and publish a resource about what you learned.)  

You can also find lots of tutorial on the web if you search Kinetic type tutorial.  Most of them will say that you need to start with a really interesting piece of source material. So that's what students should be working on -- finding that piece of text that is worth dramatizing, thinking about it stylistically -- how to make it visual in such a way that it enhances the meaning.  They could do much of that off-line -- sketching, clipping fonts from magazines, whatever.  Different students could try different treatments of the same source material to see how it is experienced when you change the visual. Could be really short so as to not try their patience. :-)