Session 8: Animation – The Sequel

With reference to last week we must try and engage learners in as many interactive ways possible (Beauchamp, 2012). Today, we try and do this by utilising animation. Personally, and agreeing with Jarvis (2015), by using animation we create an interactive element to a lesson. Animation has also shown improvement in literacy skills for boys aged five to eleven (HMIE, 2007). Ultimately – when used appropriately – animation can be an excellent way to communicate ideas to learners and get learners to be proactive in their learning when they are part of its creation (Pollard, 2008). But, only if we as practitioners are confident in our ability to use the ICT tools required to implement this learning (Education Scotland, 2017).

In this week’s session – continuing from last week – we were to create an animation in groups that does one of the following:

    • recreates a historical event
    • represents a geographical process e.g. glaciation, volcanic eruption
    • recreates a real-life scenario e.g. going to the dentist, shopping
    • explains a mathematical principle.

Our group had chosen to explain a mathematical principle – more specifically about equivalent fractions – because our group thought it would be a welcomed challenge to try and create a narrative around this subject. Usually – we agreed – fractions would more likely be taught using items like pizza, cakes or chocolate bars. This, in turn, created the said challenge and we discussed a variety of different ways try and translate this to something that could be used as part of a stop motion animation instead of real life. This discussion lead us down a path of crossing over fairy tale characters, Lego, and fractions which – quite frankly – we did not realise was going to work until we put our narrative down on paper.

Over the week between session we divided up creative tasks so that we could start animating as soon as we were in class again. I created items that would be used to make the backgrounds for our animation – and do not want to think about how much coloured card was recycled when something did not turn out just right. I also created the characters that would in the animation and brought a roll of paper to be the background. Overall, I think the creative tasks were divided as equally as they could be but I think we may have been too ambitious with how much we wanted to animate.

In class we started to “film” the animation and we slowly realised that it was going to be a very time-consuming. Our original idea had Little Red Riding Hood travelling to her gran’s house using a map that said one fraction as a direction but coming across forks in the road with one signpost marked with an equivalent fraction and another with a fraction that was not equivalent and this was to repeat three times. But with the nature of stop motion animation that requires several photographs taken in succession to create the illusion of movement (Jarvis, 2015) for our group to get through three different sequences of different equivalent fractions would have been impossible in the time-frame of one input. I am thankful that our group was able to think quick on our feet and I know without them I could not have thought of how to fix the problems we faced as quickly as we did together. Our group had overcome this obstacle by reducing the sequence to only one fork in the road and explaining that set of fractions in as much detail as possible. As I said from last week I am glad I was in the group I was in because we collaborate well and work hard to persevere when we experience shortcomings that are outwith our control.

The final product is something I am very proud of and if teaching does not work out for me I would happily make more episodes of “Little Red’s Fraction Foot Path”. If teaching does work out for me I think this project is something that I would be happy to show my future class – I just hope they do not find out I am the one voicing the narrator.

Please enjoy the final product below, or if no video is showing in your browser click here.

References

Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to Practice. Pearson.

HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE). (2007) Improving Scottish Education The Use Of Ict In Learning And Teaching. [Online] Available: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/6488/7/iseictilat_Redacted.pdf [Accessed: 27 February 2019].

Jarvis, M. (2015) Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Classroom: A Very practical Guide for Teachers and Lecturers. Routledge.

Pollard, A. (2008) Reflective Teaching – Evidence Informed Professional Practice. 3rd ed. London: Continuum.

Scottish Government (2017) Enhancing Learning And Teaching Through The Use Of Digital Technology: A Digital Learning And Teaching Strategy For Scotland. Scottish Government [Online] Available at: https://www2.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00505855.pdf [Accessed: 28 February 2019].

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *