Animation

Wow...this week was a challenge, but I can honestly say that I enjoyed the learning process (as frustrating as it was). Yes, I think animations are a fantastic way to engage students in their learning. I think students could benefit from watching animations as well as creating their own animations.

I chose to use an animation software called Alice. I had never used it before, but they offered some good tutorials. I spent a lot of time playing around on Alice. One of the things that frustrated me was the limitation to objects you could add. Originally, I wanted to stick with a planet theme, but the space objects were limited to 3 objects...none of which were planets. I decided to use the sea objects instead. At first I tried using an ocean floor background, but the layers were extremely difficult. Objects would hide between layers and I couldn't find them. I gave up on that as I could not get my shark to show up and I stuck with the basic template. After creating it, I realized there were some good sky backgrounds that are user friendly.

To me the most frustrating thing about Alice was the saving/exporting option. I wish there had been a tutorial on exporting the video. You have to install 3 Java applets. I wouldn't have figured this out on my own....I'm not that tech savvy. Once you install those, it's pretty easy to export.

I haven't use the software, Scratch, but I've heard great things. It ws develped by some MIT students. Our CIT (Campus Instructional Technologist) really likes this animation software.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

Another site I've recently learned about is Kerpoof. This is geared towards children. They can even earn points every time they create a story, picture, drawing, etc. They can use their points to by new tools for their creations. I am letting my kids create their own accounts with a fake e-mail. If they have their own e-mail they can use it. They are all very excited about this!

http://www.kerpoof.com/

I am glad I have learned more about animations.