Week 5

Wk 5: Reflections on Animation and Educational Games

Today in our tutorial we focused on animation-type websites. On the whole I believe these to be a fantastic way to support and inspire literacy- based activities, especially amongst those 'literacy reluctant' students.

The first website we looked at was http://www.zimmertwins.com/ which is designed for making movies with a predetermined list of characters and actions. I found this to be a lot of fun, so I imagine my future students will find this to be an enjoyable exercise also. See below for a excerpt of my movie!

I believe a program like to this to be very useful in the classroom. Firstly, students (on the whole) are naturally very interested in comics, cartoons etc and this is a way to engage them in completing literacy-based tasks. I also like that the format of the activity is not too 'free' for students, i.e. there is a predetermined list of characters, settings and actions. Therefore I believe that students will not get too overwhelmed by choice as the restrictions in place will make it easier for them to generate ideas and end up with a better-quality finished product.

I think of some students I have come across during my placements whose literacy skills were well below that of their peers. These students were incredibly hard to motivate to complete story-writing in the traditional sense (e.g. with a pencil, writing book and 'silent working'). I think these students would most benefit from completing literacy/writing based tasks in a format such as this, as many of the challenging elements of writing are removed - e.g. students are not required to handwrite and they don't need to come up with the initial ideas.


The next website we looked at today was www.buildyourwildself.com . This involves the building of a character incorporating both human and animalistic features. An aspect of this website that really appealed to me was that after creating your 'wild self' you were provided with factual information about the animal features you had included. E.g. for my creation to the left of screen ("The Atoo-Peacock") I was told that I had included a Palm Cockatoo Crest which 'helps you communicate - a raised crest can signal to other birds that you're a friend" and a Peacock Male Tail which "can grow to be 60 inches long and helps scare away other animals that may want to eat you". Fantastic. This would work wonderfully in the classroom where, for example, students could make a wild version of themselves and then use the facts provided by the website to go and research other facts about their hybrid creature. Or, alternatively, students could use the website to build characters (with or without animal features) to include in their narrative writing. I could see this working very well if it happened at the beginning of a narrative writing unit, where the exercise would motivate students to brainstorm ideas for their stories especially helpful for those strong visual learners and reluctant writers. The other website that would be good for this is www.reasonablyclever.com/?page_id=29 where you make a Lego character by modifying hair, face, clothes, etc.

Overall i think anything that can act as a stimulus for literacy is very useful and should be used in the classroom. On my recent practicum I spent a small amount of time in a 3/4 classroom where the students each had the use of laptops and access to internet. When it came to 'writing time' the teacher simply said - "Use you computer to write a story". So I saw students typing their stories into blank word documents. This technique worked ok for the keen writers and those with high-level literacy skills, but not so well for those strugglers. Let's just say I saw a lot of procrastinating and distracting behaviours, and not a lot of words written. How fantastic would the use of these websites be at this initial stage of writing for these 3/4 students! It would be incredibly fun, engaging and stimulating activity for both those keen and those reluctant writers.

'Build Your Wild Self' example number 2 - 'The Rein-Monarch Butterfly"










Lego Character

Another website we explored today was www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/default/inspire.htm which included a series of videos outlining the work of animators and the making of certain animated TV shows. These TV shows included some likely to be very well known by Primary Age students such as 'Shawn the Sheep' and 'Jane the Dragon'.

A website such as this would be fabulous to include at the beginning of a unit on animation in order to engage the students and generate some excitement around the upcoming activities.

A unit on animation would be fantastic for students and has clear links with VELS, ICT for creating and ICT for communicating. On this website you can actually download storyboards, props and sets. These would act as a great way to scaffold the unit - moving towards students either modifying these to make them their own, or actually creating their own once having gained ideas from the website about how these are done.

Another program that was drawn to my attention in the workshop was Microsoft Photostory - which i have since downloaded and played with on my computer. I found this to be an extremely user-friendly program which can be used to display a series of video in the form of a 'story' or 'videoclip'. I made a photostory with some of my photos from my trip to Europe, with an appropriate travel song playing in the background. Fantastic! For 10 minutes work I managed to create a 4.5 minute professional-looking presentation depicting the highlights of my trip.

I believe this would be a wonderful tool to use in the classroom - from probably grade 2 and upwards. Students could use this to present work, make presentations depicting highlights of excursions or camps, or even take a series of photos to tell a story. I take my mind back to an assignment I had in Yr 11 Media - to make a videoclip. In order to do this I my group used a series of photos with a backing track. This process took hours!!!! It is amazing that the students of today have such a quick and easy program to complete the exact same activity.

Another way this could be used in literacy is that the teacher could use a series of photos as a stimulus, and have the students write a story based on te pictures. This would again remove the initial (sometimes insumountable) challenge of generating the initial ideas for writing.

Another website we explored in the workshop today was 'Sketchswap' whereby you contribute a sketch to the site and it get swapped and then you get a sketch completed by someone else. The sketch I received is to the left of screen - a far better sketch than the one that I contributed!!!!

This is a very interesting idea; however it would not work to use this program in the classroom as you have no control over what your students will get back. E.g. one student in my workshop received a sketch which state "Don't eat spaghetti, eat human meat" - not so suitable for the school context! However if you could replicate this idea in the Primary School, by perhaps a 'sketch swap letterbox' or something, where a teacher could do a quick scan of all of the sketches and then swap them for students. I believe this idea would work really well as sketching can be a very popular activity amongst Primary School students, and this would be a wonderful way for students to share ideas, cultivate relationships across age levels, and just generally generate excitement, celebrate creativity and create a sense of community in the school.

Today we also had the opportunity to explore http://www.ziptales.com.au/ which I found to be a great resource for a wide variety of classroom-based ICT activities. This site is also good because it is based in Ballarat and I believe it to be important to support Australian websites.

It was difficult to view all aspects of the website because you have to be signed up, but from what I was able to see I can imagine a wide variety of applications in the classroom.

For example, the site could be used for some interactive, team-based story writing where students move around the room to different students' computers and continue their stories. I imagine this activity to be very good to encourage mental flexibility as students need to continuously orientate themselves to new stories, characters and ideas. I think this type of activity would also be very good for the perfectionist, type A personalities as they are placed out of their comfort zone and need to adapt to changes to their own original story. I guess the only worry with this technique is that those students with Autism or Aspergers may find this activity too much, and they may feel too out of control that it may actually be detrimental to the learning outcomes. If this was the case with some students in my class I would allow them to write theor own story and sit out of the rotational exercise. From what I could see the make-and-do section of the website is also a fantastic resource fore teachers as it includes instructions for making a wide variety of objects across many subjects.

Overall I am blown away by the amount of quality animation websites available for use by Primary School students. I am inspired to use these as much as possible to appeal to visual learners, stimulate literacy and hopefully, one day, be involved in the implementation of an integrated unit on animation like I read that so many other Victorian schools are doing.