Teaching Animation in Schools

Teaching students how to create animated movies is a great way to help them learn. Here’s why:

• It’s a fun way to learn topics from the standard course of study
• It promotes teamwork
• Students work with their hands and solve problems as they create hand-drawn animation, paper cut-out animation, clay animation or stop motion animation
• It uses several learning styles: visual, verbal, kinesthetic
• It engages students who struggle with writing papers or oral presentations

Hardware needed to create animation:

• A camera that can be connected directly to a computer. Two types work best:
• Webcam, which includes a USB cable that plugs into a computer
• Mini-DV Camcorder, which plugs into a computer using an IEEE-1394 (Firewire)  cable

• A computer (PC or Mac, preferably with DVD burner)
• Support equipment: tripod, lights, a means of supporting backgrounds
• Or consider our ReadyANIMATOR; details at: www.ReadyANIMATOR.com

Software needed:

• Animation capture software, which captures images one frame at a time, and then strings them together into a movie. Available software:
• Frames 4: www.tech4learning.com/frames (PC, Mac, Linux)
• I Can Animate: www.kudlian.net/products/icananimate (PC, Mac)
• Stop Motion Pro: www.stopmotionpro.com (PC)
• i-StopMotion: www.boinx.com/istopmotion (Mac)

• Editing software is helpful, such as Windows MovieMaker for PC or iMovie for Mac

More details about all of the above in future blogs.