It’s the morning of the second day at the eTwinning professional development workshop here at the NCSL in Nottingham. Teachers have again been able to choose from six parallel sessions. One of these was run by the creative director of Animation for Education, Oscar Stringer, giving us tricks, tips and examples of how model animation can be used in the classroom.
First of all, Oscar stressed the importance of keeping your animation ideas nice and simple. If your idea is straightforward then you know you’re on the right track as the best animations come from simple ideas.
It’s also important to keep the models themselves simple, with two or three features on the head and body that can be animated (the eyes, ears, tail, legs). Kids often try to animate everything, which can get messy. It’s also a good idea to keep the animated features nice and big as they are easier to animate them this way.
Teamwork is an important feature of making a good animation. Everyone has great ideas and ability to make great models, but the key thing is how you collaborate and talk to each other to make the best movies.
Oscar demonstrated how to create the animations with some models created by teachers in the session. He used a video camera and mac with the software ‘I Can Animate’ (available for both Mac and PC - approx £35)
The teachers then had a lot of fun working in small groups to make their own short animations. We’ll have links to these here on the blog soon.
If you’d like more information on Oscar and his work then visit the Animation for Education website.
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