Tuesday 19th February

Animation can be described as “The technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the film is shown as a sequence.” (Oxford, 2019). In todays class we learned all about animation and how it can be integrated into learning and teaching. The task to go along with this session is going to be carried out over 2 weeks. This week consisted of getting to know different animation apps and planning out our animation for next week. We were given the opportunity to use apps including puppet pals and iStop.

There are 5 main types of animation. These include cut out, stop motion, pixilation, drawn and computer. (Moving Image Education). We are going to be using stop motion animation next week. An example of this could be using Lego men or plasticine models. Jarvis states that using sound and video should enhance the quality of information processing and, hence learning. (Jarvis, 2015, p93). This shows that by allowing children to use animation their overall sense of skill receiving will improve. They are more likely to be able to enhance their learning through videos, images and sounds. It was also shown by Jarvis that the use of animation involved putting together images to make them look as if they were moving (Jarvis, 2015, p89). This is a major benefit for children as it yet again (like many other technologies) allows them to be interactive and imaginative by coming up with different ways to interpret this idea of a moving image.

According to the experience and outcome, I feel animation links in with outcome TCH 2-10a which is “I can recognise basic properties and uses for a variety of materials and can discuss which ones are most suitable for a given task”. This is appropriate because to make an animation we have to experiment with different materials and props.

To begin we looked at the puppet pals app. This app was really straight forward and easy to use. You can choose what characters you want to use and what backgrounds. Then you can record yourself speaking while moving characters about, on and off the scenes. Below is a photo of the app. It shows some of the characters and backgrounds you can use. Due to this app being so easy to use I feel like younger children would be able to let their imagination run wild and create some good animations. It is also a lot more appealing to the eye than many other apps so this might make children want to use it more.

Next, we went onto using the iStop Motion app. This app came across a bit more complicated than the puppet pals app. This is the app we are going to be using next week so this was a good opportunity to get to explore it. Our task was to make a short practise animation using stick men. I found this fun, however, some controls were hard to work. I also found it difficult to keep the stick men standing up or keep the camera straight. Due to this my result seemed a bit shaky. However, I was working alone on this so next time I would make sure I had others helping. I will be completing my animation next week in a group so this should allow me to improve on this.

Lastly to end the lesson my group planned for our animation next week. We decided to do it on Tsunami’s. I feel that natural disasters is a great topic for children to learn about. We created a material list of what we had to bring in and a storyboard to show our main ideas. Attached below is a picture of the storyboard. By the end of this session I felt prepared for the following week.

So far, I have really enjoyed learning about animation. I am excited to create my own animation next week based on a tsunami. This will be a great opportunity to further explore the iStop app and use all the features to a large extent.

References

Moving Image Education [Online] Available: https://movingimageeducation.org/create-films/animation [Accessed 16 February 2019]

Oxford (2019) Definition of animation [Online] Available: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/animation [Accessed 20 February 2019]

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