i-Create

Animations are related to fun and entertainment and they were only made by highly technical and talented people.  There are now many sites which have made it possible for anyone to create animations.  These sites allow students to customise their own animations, this is a great example of personalised creativity.

Many sites allow students to choose the characters, background settings and objects.  They can set the scene and create a story.  The animation sites can either be text to speech sites such as http://www.xtranormal.com/ where students type in text and choose a computer generated voice which then speaks the words.  Other sites such as http://domo.goanimate.com/ and http://goanimate.com/ allow you to add dialogue by typing text into speech bubbles.  Unfortunately, xtranormal and go animate is more suited to Secondary School Students.  However, Pivot Stick figure Animator and http://www.zimmertwins.com/  are great to use with primary students.

Animations encourage students to plan and organise stories and develop literacy skills, decision making and problem solving, not to mention developing creativity and ICT skills.

There are many uses for animations in the classroom such as:

• an alternative to a book review
• critique of an art work
• reinterpret a story to reinforce understanding
• adapt a fairytale
• use a list of new words which has to be used in the animation to demonstrate understanding
• use when learning a different language
• use to present information from a research task
• use to reflect on a task

Please look at these examples of digital animations.









GoAnimate.com: Using Go Animate by Steph


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!




Pivot Stickfigure Animator is a fun and easy way to produce an animation. You can use it as a task, introduction into an animation unit, telling a story or to develop design and ICT skills. This is a great program that is free to download from http://www.snapfiles.com/GeT/sTiCkFiGuRe.html


You can create an animation using a stickfigure or other characters. It can be as simple and as complex as you want it. It can be used from primary school students through to high school.

Students can add a background by using images or creating their own using tools such as MS Paint or http://www.sumopaint.com/home/  which is mentioned in the online drawing tools section on this site. By adding a background, it helps students with the creation of the animation by placing elements which the figures can interact with. eg. Hurdles to jump, diving board.

The animation is quite simple to make, simply move the figure using the red points and then click on next frame button. Continue until the animation is finished. There is also the option to add items into the animation which can also move. eg. a ball, snowboard, etc. The final animation can be saved it as a .gif file. This can then be imported into Windows Movie Maker and students can add a title, credits and music and convert it into a video or add it to a power point presentation.

I like to choose a theme and make certain specifications, such as, no violence or injuries. The theme of Olympic Sports (Summer or Winter) is a great theme to use, giving students many ideas to choose from. It also provides the opportunity for research and to incorporate other subjects by exploring: What are the Olympics? Where have the Olympics been held? Where did they originate? Look at flags and anthems from different countries.

By creating an animation with this software students learn and develop skill such as decision making, problem solving and sequencing. Depending on the task which is set it also allows students to apply prior knowledge and to express their creativity.

 

Here are a few some examples: