Week 5: Animated classrooms

This week we had a look at some of the uses of animation in the classroom. I did a Bachelor of  Media Studies (focusing on television) prior to my Grad DipEd so was particularly interested in this week's topic.

I was particularly inspired by the student- made claymations we watched in this week's lecture. They were so cute, it was great to see the students' imaginations at work. Animation is a great way for kids to express themselves, and  to learn some of the conventions of film and television (camera angles and shot types for example). Additionally, it can give them practice at narrative storytelling. Animation is also a creative way for students to present information rather than just writing paragraphs on a topic.

One of the downsides to claymation is that it is a very lengthy process. A faster alternative is to use a website that has pre-made animation clips that can be put together in lots of different orders. An  example of such a site is the Zimmertwins website: http://www.zimmertwins.com/movie/create. 

We had a go a making our own narrative animation at the Zimmertwins website. This is a great site that is designed for children. Students can pick from three different characters to 'star' in their animation- a boy, a girl, and a cat. They can also set the scene for their film, and a prop, from a diverse list. The website then has heaps of pre-made clips for students to play with, with many different character actions and emotions. There would be many, many different stories that could be produced with the material supplied on this site.

 Something I really liked about this site was that as the students build their film, they simultaneously build a translated text version of their story. The text is only simple paragraphs, but it could help children with semiotics as words are put into context. Whilst this website had lots of options for students to get creative with, it was well organized so that it wasn't complicated. The setup of this website is like a very basic version of Premiere/Final Cut in that students order their animation clips on a 'timeline'. Students can review their film as they go, and then make any changes they see fit. Therefore in using the Zimmertwins website students are getting used to the conventions of video editing software.

Here are some screenshots from my animation, about a superstar cat:

This week we also created avatars of ourselves on various websites. Building avatars could be used as a Design exercise, for example I designed a 'Super Student' complete with scroll, textbook and cape at the Lego website.

Below is my avatar from http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

                                      

Below is my Lego avatar from  http://www.reasonablyclever.com/      

 

                                                              Also in this lesson we had a look at some educational online games:

http://www.sumdog.com/ had a fun racing car math game, whose difficulty could be changed to suit different ages/abilities. This game was quite short but engaging as students had to try to beat other online competitors. 

A longer game could be found at    http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/home.html. This site is educational and fun, it gets students to think about how to plan a town so that the effects of natural disasters such as flooding and wildfire are reduced. This would be highly relevant when studying natural disasters as part of humanities. I think this is the key to incorporating games into lessons, making sure they are relevant and educational. They should still serve a learning purpose. 

 

Week 4: Telling stories with inspiration

This week we visited the ABC's Dust Echoes website and picked an aboriginal story to retell in pictures. 

You can see my work above, I chose to retell the Brolga Story.

You can check out the Dust Echoes website at : http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/dustEchoesFlash.htm

I feel compelled to warm though that some of the stories and their accompanying videos were a little grizzly and violent. I don't think this particular site is suitable for all ages, you could always adapt the activity to a different text though. This exercise again used the program Inspiration, which we looked at in week 1.  The activity was another good example of how Inspiration can be used to break down information/ideas. Though this time we were breaking down a story and retelling it using pictures and our own words. The pictures I used were actually screenshots from a video.

We could use this activity with our students as a comprehension exercise to see if the students have grasped the main ideas of a story. This exercise has the benefit of being both linguistic and visual, and can help students to understand the concepts of narrative and plot development. It also highlights the fact that it is not only written stories that have a narrative, that narrative still applies to the film medium. 

By applying this technique to a culturally relevant story, like those on the Dust Echoes website, we can integrate this activity into humanities lessons.

The other activity we completed in this workshop was to make an Excel graph of the number of each colour of M&Ms in a bag.  I am a big fan of chocolate, and I imagine a lot of kids are too so I think this activity would go well in the classroom. I'm not sure if all the parents would approve though, childhood obesity is such a concern these days, with schools are promoting healthy lunchboxes and banning junkfood in the tuckshop. If the idea of promoting chocolate deters you, again this activity could be adapted. I remember when I was in primary school we counted the cars that drove past the school over a set amount of time and noted the colour of each car using a tally sheet. The information collected from this could then be graphed in excel.

Whilst I had used Microsoft Excel previously, I hadn't realised that you could add pictures to your graphs and tables. It was a good reminder that there is always more to learn.

The obvious place to integrate Excel into the classroom would be during maths lessons, but also science as tables and graphs are often used to represent and compare data collected.

Below is the M&M table and graph I created in Excel: