The BEds Get Animated

This is the last post, for now, on the work of the BEd Computers, Creativity and Education class. The final session was on stop-motion animation. (For the other posts, see The BEd Students Tell A Story and The BEds are back... and this time they're podcasting.)

As with many of the other sessions, we started with a brief presentation on the value of pupils creating animations and its potential educational value. There was then a quick demonstration of the animation software - we used the wonderfully simple, yet very powerful, I Can Animate. The students then formed into two groups and started work.

In the space of about 80 minutes, they had to film their animation and then import it into iMovie. In iMovie they added sound effects, music and titles. Given the time constraints they were working under, I think both groups produced fun animations that tell a story. Hopefully they will have seen that, although it is time consuming, the ICT skills required to create an animation are not hugely complex.

If you have any suggestions or examples on how animation can be used effectively, please leave a comment. I am sure the students would be glad to hear from you.

Fun on Friday #27: SAM Animation

Animation! Or more to the point: free animation software! :-)

I've written before about animation (Fun on Friday #12: Go animate!) and I do a fair bit with students (More from the creative BEds). Whenever I demonstrate creating stop motion animation, students always ask where they can get animation software. I used to recommend I Can Animate. In fact, I still will recommend I Can Animate - it's a great piece of software which is fairly cheap but stunningly good at what it does. However, the next thing I tend to be asked is, "Are there any free programs that do this?", as they play the poor student card. Up until now, I've said, "Not really." but now, I can tell them about SAM Animation.

SAM Animation is great wee program that is available as a free download for Macintosh and Windows. The interface looks a bit clunky (at least it does in the Macintosh version) and it does not recognise the built-in camera on my iMac (not much use for animation anyway) but it is free and it does what it does with the minimum of fuss. Well worth every penny you don't have to spend on it.

The program seems to be primarily intended for schools and educators. For example, the developers seem to be trying to create a community of users with a YouTube-esque Gallery and a wiki with Classroom Activity ideas.

So, if this latest flu virus brings about the aporkolypse, and you end up hiding indoors away from human contact, make sure you have downloaded SAM Animation and at least you can amuse yourself by making pasticine animations of a sneeze while you wait for the symptoms to develop and/or disappear. :-)

[Addendum: I fully intended to have a "proper" entry before the return of Fun on Friday... but the best laid schemes, gang aft agley - especially when you're suffering from sleep deprivation!]