I have combined week six and seven’s blog post together because they both focus on animation through movie making. What a fun filled learning during these two weeks! Our tasks were to use animation programmes, specifically Puppet Pals, iMovie and iStop Motion.
Animation and using it across the curriculum explore all areas of learning, including art, design, history, ICT and literacy. Children are used to watching animation in movies made by Dreamworks and Disney Pixar, therefore, it is extremely important to address to them that animation is not just used by these movie companies but rather it is a performing art. Animation is an excellent group-work exercise and through every child’s individual co-operation, as a group, bringing all of their skills together, they can create a fun and creative animation (Film Education 2012).
One thing I believe that any teacher or student teacher will worry about is the introduction to these new technologies. It is important that we do not show our worries but rather encourage these technologies to our pupils. As ICT is a part of children’s everyday lives, it should be a part of their everyday play also (Beauchamp, 2012, p.66).
Incorporating animation into classroom learning is important for interactivity and developing children’s skills. There are five types of animation, including ‘Cutout, Stop-motion, Pixillation, Drawn and Computer’ (Moving Image Education website).
Our task over the two weeks was to create either an iMovie or trailer based on a children’s novel. We were to incorporate our own ideas and ranges of resources provides to create the movie. This was a fun learning experience as it consisted of us using our imagination to create a story, along with incorporating our literacy skills to tell the story and using our digital skills to use the range of resources provides to set the scene for the story.
Taking away the knowledge and skills that I gained from today and last week’s lessons, I can use the iMovie technology to incorporate this in classroom learning where I can get my pupils to create their own stories and use resources to plan each scene and get them to film a story of their own which will encourage them to enhance their visual representations, as well as illustrating their processes and providing an interactive element (Jarvis, M. 2015).
References:
Film Education. (2012). Introduction to Primary Animation. Available: http://www.filmeducation.org/resources/primary/teaching_with_film/primary_animation/introduction/. Last accessed 22nd Feb 2018.
Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary Classroom: From Pedagogy top Practice. Pearson.
Moving Image Education website: [Online] https://movingimageeducation.org/create-films/animation [Accessed: 14.2.18]
Jarvis, M. (2015) Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Classroom: A Very practical Guide for Teachers and Lecturers. Routledge.
