After last week’s session we know that ICT allows pupils to achieve something that would be very difficult or even impossible to achieve in any other way (Beauchamp, 2012, p.54). we know that there are many ways that animation can enhance learning:
- To enhance learners’ visual representations.
- To illustrate processes.
- To provide an interactive element. (Jarvis, 2015, p92)
This is why, as a future teacher I need to be proficient at animation. To work on this, my group and I spent the week leading up to this session researching how we could create something original in this session.
In this week’s session 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.
After researching how we could use animation to create one of the above, we decided to create an animation of a volcanic eruption. A geographical process was something we had not worked on yet in any module so far, so we thought it would be interesting to do something different. Also, two members had passed higher geography and knew quite a lot about the process. When talking about the topic everyone seemed to engage in the discussions as it was interesting, this meant that everyone wanted to help out and learn more about the process.
Before coming to the session, we decided to make everything we needed so we could get started as soon as possible. We All had tasks to complete bring to the class. I was given the task of going to the shops and buying glue, newspaper and paint. We then met up at a convenient place for everyone and set about constructing our volcano.
Once in the class we began to decide where every piece should go and what way it would enter and leave. We wanted the animation to be rich with information but also to be fun to watch. This meant we had to make the volcano erupt in our animation. This brought on new problems as we would only have one chance to get the animation right. we decided to do some practice runs without erupting to make sure we got it just right. After we decided it would work, we then began the final product and erupted the volcano. After everything went to plan, we then began to edit the photos into istopmotion.
Istopmotion was very easy to use. It had a lot of tools that made it simple to use and made it very effective. I enjoyed using this app and I believe it helped to create a very good animation.
Overall, my group and I worked very well together and managed to create a very informative and creative animation. This helped me realise the power of animation and how it can enhance the learning of pupils. However, it also made clear just how long it takes to create such an animation. If I was to create more, I would make sure to give myself plenty of time so I am not rushed and can produce my best work.
References:
Jarvis, M. (2015) Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Classroom: A Very practical Guide for Teachers and Lecturers. Routledge.
Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary Classroom: From Pedagogy top Practice. Pearson.
