Animation in the Classroom
Claymation is one type of animation that a teacher could easily introduce to their students. Think Wallace and Grommet or Harvey Crumpet. These types of animations are made by creating a character out of clay or play dough and taking a series of still photos. These photos,when shown in sequence, make a short film. Below is a claymation of Mario! There are LOTS of examples on YouTube of animations that have been made by other students and the public that you can show your students to initially engage them and inspire them! Alternatively you, as the teacher, can make one yourself to show them whats possible!
I can't help but think about my placement class and how much they would have enjoyed a project where they made an actual animated movie. They were such a creative bunch of children and would have loved making something so special! Such a project requires problem solving, critical thinking, planning, designing and creativity: It would be an incredibly rich task to complete. Such a project could even be responsible for igniting a child's curiosity in a career in animation.
Workshop Activities and Classroom Applications
Today Greg introduced us to animation. He told us that animation and claymation projects are great ways to creatively integrate ICT into lessons. During the workshop we explored a variety of websites that allow students to create their own animations and characters. I have discussed each below:
The website http://www.dfilm.com/live/moviemaker.html is a fantastic resource for making short animations. It is not suitable for primary school aged students because of some of the content however it could be used in a high school classroom or by the teacher themselves to demonstrate how students can make their own animations. Alternatively the teacher could use this program on the interactive whiteboard (filtering the content) to create a class animation based on the suggestions of the students.
Build Your Wild Self
Secondly we explored a website called http://www.buildyourwildself.com/. It is a great website that allows students to create their own wild self by choose from various animal features. They add these features to their bodies and can name their wild self. the characters they make can be used in various ways.
I actually used this website during my placement as an introductory activity for students. We read the book 'Where the Wild Things Are' and I did an art activity which required them to make themselves into Wild Things. This website was a great way to get them thinking about the features they might include on their own wild thing. They loved it so much that I let them play on the website once they had completed their work. We printed each students finished 'Wild Self' and collated them into a class book. These characters then formed the bases of a creative writing activity on visual literacy whereby the character they had created was the catalyst for their stories.
Zimmer Twins
Thirdly we looked at the site http://www.zimmertwins.com/ which is an ABC program that is similar to DVOLVER but allows the user to be more creative with story they create because there is a huge variety of actions available for your character to perform. This program is more appropriate for primary school children than DVOLVER because of its child friendly content.
Sketch Swap
Next we looked at http://www.sketchswap.com/p.com/. On this site you draw a picture and can swap it with someone else from anywhere in the world. while this site is lots of fun you cannot monitor what sketch you receive back. Students could Draw cartoons, art, brainstorms, anything. Here is a sketch I received by swapping my picture:
Reasonably Clever
We also looked at http://www.reasonablyclever.com/. This site allows you to build lego characters using the lego feature pictures on the site.Click on the 'classic kids safe minimizer' option on the tool bar to navigate to this activity. Its fantastic for creating characters that can be used in other creative projects.
Ode to a Spell Checker
Next we did an activity called 'ode to a spell checker'. Greg got us to open a word document and turn off our computer monitors. He then read us a poem and asked us to type what we heard. Once we had finished we were told to turn on the monitors to check our work, however the sentences Greg read back to us was full of homophones.
This is what I wrote:
This is the actual 'Ode' that was read to us:
Roller Mache
Next we investigated the site http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/ which has various videos that explain the animation process, step by step. this would be a great website to visit to introduce your students to the animation process before they attempt to make their own.
Ziptails
Lastly we looked at http://www.ziptails.com.au/. If your school subscribes to this you can use it to select a story, select a title only to make up a story. Ask students to get up and move seats then continue on with this new story, each new paragraph is highlighted a different colour so that they can say where each new person has added to their original story. Great activity for creative writing, spelling and grammar that is engaging and fun.
