Educational AnimationDigital Oasis

2010

NPST 2: Use teaching strategies and resources to engage students in effective learning.

فاعل تعلم في الطلبة تشرك التي مصادره و التعليم طرائق توظيف

Science Education Animation Lessons at Omar bin Khitab Preparatory School

Educational Animations

Educational animations are animations produced for the purpose of learning.

The popularity of using animations to help learners understand and remember information has grown with changes in media technology.

Do Animations Make Learning Faster?

Well-designed animations may help students learn faster and easier.

They are also excellent aid to teachers when it comes to explaining difficult subjects.

The difficulty may arise due to the involvement of mathematics or imagination.

Three Kinds of Educational Animation

Simple Educational Animation

User Controlled Animation:Dissection, Graphs, Java Interactive Animations

User Created Animation

Educational Effectiveness

Why is it that animations sometimes lack educational effectiveness?

Animation problems can cause misunderstanding.

PROBLEM: Animation is TOO fast.

PROBLEM: No written explanation.

Always check for understanding.

Resources

Heathers Animations – GIF animations (Teachers only - Site ads are NOT for students)•http://www.heathersanimations.com/school1.html•http://www.heathersanimations.com/science1.html

Yahoo Animation Collections - http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Comics_and_Animation/Animation/Computer_Animation/ :

53 Animated GIF collectionsDownloads and Short FilmsMotion CaptureFlipbook Galleries

Popular PowerPoint Animations – TEACHER INTERACTIVE?

What Class is this organism in?

Mammalia

User Control of Animation

Another suggestion for addressing such problems is to provide user control for the learner over how the animation plays.

Vary aspects such as:

– playing speed

– direction,

– Labels

– audio commentary.

PhET screenshot: http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/sims.php?sim=Energy_Skate_Park

Interactive Simulations from PhET

Science Pirates: The Curse of Brownbeard

Science Pirates: The Curse of Brownbeard is a 3D scientific exploration game.

http://www.sciencepirates.org/index.html

Interactive Animation: Science

Eye Dissection: click on picture

Fish Dissection: http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00548/Dissection.html

Frog Dissection: http://www.froguts.com/flash_content/index.html (fee based )

Fetal Pig Dissection: http://www.whitman.edu/biology/vpd/main.html

Is Computer-Simulated Dissection a Better Teaching Tool than Real Animal Dissection?

Undecided! Current debates:

– Simulation Nation: The Promise of Virtual Learning Activities (Edutopia.org)

– Are Virtual Dissections an Acceptable Substitute for Real Animal Specimens? (National Education Association)

– Hands-on Anatomy Lessons Expanding (Canton Repository, Ohio)

– Science with a Bite (Daily Herald, Austin, Minnesota)– Frog and Cyberfrog Are Friends: Dissection Simulati

on and Animal Advocacy (Society and Animals)

Interactive Math

Many forms of animation are possible in Java.

Java animations create some kind of motion on the screen by drawing successive frames at a relatively high speed (usually about 10-20 times per second).

Best Java animation site is at http://www.cut-the-knot.org/index.shtml

Math Live

Math Live presents animated stories that teach mathematics lessons.

23 lessons for elementary school and middle school students.

Divided into four categories; Number, Patterns and Relations, Shape and Space, Statistics and Probability.

Interactive Math: Lure of the Labyrinth

A mathematics game designed for middle-school pre-algebra students.

The protagonist, a kid who’s just had his beloved pet abducted by Bigfoot and taken to a subterranean food mill, has to solve a series of math-based puzzles to get him back.

The puzzles focus on proportions, ratios, fractions, and variables.The educators guide gives you sound advice on how to guide your class.

http://labyrinth.thinkport.org/www/

Interactive Animation for All Subjects

BrainPOP creates animated, curriculum-based content that supports educators and engages –students: fee-based and free resources.

User Created Animations

Highest Cognitive Level: Create Animation!

How to create a Java applet video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGviqa59FC0

This video will show you how to do basic animation in Java.

Simple Creations: The Fodey Generator

Ninja Text Generator

Wizard Text Generator

Talking Flowers Talking Owls Talking Squirrels Talking Tomatoes

Student Made Flip Book Video(click picture)

Using FlipBook software, it took the student 3 weeks of drawing to make this for a student project.

Flip Book Animation

How many pictures are need to draw the cat and make it move?

Flipbook Animation Many free animation program are available online.

www.digicelinc.com/ (most professional) and www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbookdeluxe/

(easy to use -will not open at school)– Each picture should be the same height and width.

– Number the image files (for example: 01.gif, 02.gif, 03.gif, and so forth) and save them as gif images.

– Each picture will be a separate frame in your animation.

– Once you have all of them in the order you like, export the layers as a gif animation.

– You can also set the length of time each frame will be displayed.

– On the computer, you don’t need many frames to make your image “move.” Sometimes just two or three different drawings are enough to suggest motion.

Stop Motion: Animation for Educationwww.animationforeducation.co.uk

Model making session where each pupil makes a model from Plasticine.

Story board a simple story involving each of their characters.

Shoot film in groups with one group per computer and camera.

The pupils will produce films lasting 30- 45 seconds each.

Stop Motion Animation

Simple Story Board

Long Shot

Puts the subject in their environment

Mid Shot

Emphasis is on the subject’s

actions and word.

Close Up

Emphasise Emotion,

information, action and reaction.

Xtranormal: http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-science-math-lessons

Teacher: "One student, who was typically an unmotivated writer, spent hours writing and rewriting her script so it would work well in the Xtranormal video.“

"One way we can use technology is by using Xtranormal. You get an Xtranormal account, and you can make movies by picking a character (or sometimes two if you want), a setting, and a voice for the character.

You can teach any subject with Xtranormal videos by having your character define vocabulary words or describe concepts. If you want the character to say something, all you have to do is type the script in the script box. When you press Action, he or she will say everything you wrote.“

Xtranormal’s Text-to-movie

Create your own animated flick with a few simple steps.

You could create a short animation giving instructions or a sub plan for a day you will be absent.

Your students can use it to demonstrate a concept or even teach a concept to another class or grade level.

yutubemedia

“In this video I show you how to Make A Customized 3D Computer Cartoon character without having to fuss with time lines and all that stuff. It's a very simple way to make a cool animation.”

More Animation Creation Sources

Animation Creation Sources

Animoto makes it possible to quickly create a video using

still images, music, and text. If you can make a slideshow

presentation, you can make a video using Animoto.

Animoto's free service limits you to 30 second videos.

Masher is a great, free, tool for creating video mash-ups.

Masher offers a large collection of video clips from

the BBC's Motion Gallery and Rip Curl video. You can add

your own images, video clips. Masher also gives you the

option to insert text throughout your videos

Voki – Design a Talking Avatar

http://www.voki.com/create.php

Credit: Voki

A Voki is a mini-avatar users can create online for free. They can embed their Voki into Web pages or blogs, and write or record the text it speaks. (For a quick look at Vokis in education, go to Sue Waters's blog.)

Vokis take about 5 minutes to create.

Voices and accents can be selected if you decide to type your message in via the computer keyboard.

You can record your own voice via mobile phone or microphone.

Teacher Example:I would use a Voki to explain the problems to my class. For example, if I wanted them to guess a number I was thinking of, my Voki would give clues such as 'I am a multiple of three. I am an even number, and my ones place times two equals my tens place. Who am I?'

Animation Creation Resources

Memoov is a free service for creating animated videos. Without downloading any software or having any special skills, Memoov allows users to create animated videos up to five minutes in length. Creating an animated video with Memoov can be as simple as selecting a setting image(s), selecting a character or characters, and adding dialogue.

On the Zimmer Twins site, students do not need to have any drawing skills in order to create a story as all elements are added to the video through a simple drag and drop interface.

This site is dedicated to making stop motion animation with LEGO bricks and figures.http://www.brickfilms.com/index.php

Screen Captures

Snag It for Images & ScreenToaster for Videos

Snagit Screen Capture Software

Create an image of all or part of what you see you see on your computer monitor

Annotation varieties like arrows, speech bubbles, fancy edge effects and more.

ScreenToaster

Features great video quality.

The ability to add captions

Plus it lets you easily upload your video to YouTube, or download it in a variety of formats for viewing or editing later.

Citations & Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_animatio

PowerPoint Heaven - The Power to Animate Contains tutorials on creating animations for PowerPoint Presentations.

http://phet.colorado.edu/get_phet/full_install.php

http://www.nga.gov/kids/stella/activityflip.htm#sequence

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/02/create-simple-animated-movies-with.html

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/11/six-easy-ways-for-students-to-create.html

http://www.slideshare.net/kiranb/effective-use-of-animation-in-education-advertising-and-entertainment

http://instructify.com/2009/01/15/froguts-frog-dissection-online/

Biology Animations

– http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animation.html