Tuesday 26th February

Today’s lesson in digital technologies was a continuation from last week. To recap, last week was all about animation. We got to play around with some useful apps and planned our animation for this week. For this week we had to decide what our animation was going to be on. It had to recreate a historical event, represent a geographical process e.g. volcanic eruption, recreate a real-life scenario e.g. going to the dentist or explain a mathematical principle. As stated last week my group decided to represent the geographical process of a tsunami. Our aim was to make it fun for children to watch but also educational. Beauchamp stated, “ICT equipment is part of pupils’ everyday life, so should be part of their everyday play.” (Beauchamp, 2012, p66). This shows that by using ICT such as animation in an educational way, children will enhance their learning through play. ICT is a fun way of developing everyday skills that children will need when they go onto further education.

To begin, we sorted all our materials out and delegated tasks for each other to carry out. Most of our set for the animation was handmade, for example, our background. However, we did decide to use Lego men to play the part of people and had a few toy vehicles to represent real cars and motorbikes. A quote from Moving Image Education stated, “Animating in the classroom doesn’t have to be with plasticine models – cut out animation is by far the easiest technique to start on.” (Moving Image Education). We took this into great consideration when deciding what materials to use. Animation is more than moulding clay to make people. We believed Lego and a real-life background setting would make it seem more realistic.

The experiences and outcomes that went with our animation were focussed on second level and included:

•  I can extend and enhance my design skills to solve problems and can construct models. TCH 2-09a
• I can recognise basic properties and uses for a variety go materials and can discuss which ones are most suitable for a given task. TCH 2-10a

As I stated before 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). Animation can be used to enhance learning in three main ways. These are:

• To enhance learners’ visual representations.
• To illustrate processes.
• To provide an interactive element.
(Jarvis, 2015, p92)

This shows that animation can be an important part of ICT even though it is only a very small sub topic. Many schools offer Animation clubs rather than it being promoted as a fundamental learning material. Children may benefit hugely by going to these club or by animation being introduced more into the classroom.

In the end I was very pleased with my groups finished product. However, there were a few points to reflect upon in the process of making our animation. The group that I was in was a group of five people. I personally felt that this number of people ended u being far too many. Not everyone’s opinions in the group were being heard so the outcome many not have been representative of everyone. Next time I would split the group into two groups. This would allow all the members to get a good say and two great pieces of work would be produced. Also, even though my group produced a story board and a material list, we did not discuss bringing big materials such as paper or a box to use as a set or background, so next time I will work on being more prepared and bring these materials. This could have made our animation look even more professional and appealing for children.

I overall have enjoyed learning about animation over the last two weeks. I feel that by doing this topic over two weeks I was able to gain a good insight into why animation is an important part of ICT. Next time I will ensure to act upon my reflections. Next week we are going to be learning all about game-based learning which sounds very interesting.

Attached below is a photo of the process carried out.

References

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

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

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

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