Tag Archives: animation

Myths and Legends – Port Ellen Primary School⤴

from @ Glowing Posts

Myths and Legends – Port Ellen Primary School

A nice example of a pupil written post and use of embedding google video to show their animation.

What was the mythical creatures called one of them are called penfin and the other is called dogor  the animations were like there was a bad guy and a good guy  who save the day. and they live happily ever after.

And…Action! Creating a Teaching Video⤴

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Looking to create a teaching video?

If you wish to create a teaching video to share with your class then where do you start?

There are a number of different ways to create a teaching video.

You don’t need lots of fancy filming equipment, specialist lighting, highly scripted text, remote microphones or

a studio set! You can just use what you have available – and be yourself. If you want to be on camera, that’s fine, but if you just want your voice over the activity you are filming then that’s perfectly fine too.

You just need something to record the video (eg phone/tablet) – & your skills and experience as a teacher (and maybe something to edit what you create).

  • Your choice partly depends on what you are aiming to share what are you trying to achieve, how much information are you trying to share and in what way will you share the video with your intended audience?
  • Your choice partly depends on what you want the video to look like – do you want to be on camera, do you wish to include your voice, do you want it to be a video of a PowerPoint presentation (with or without narrated voice), or do you want to make use of animated characters instead of your own image?
  • Your choice also depends on what device and software/apps you have available to make the teaching videos, whether laptop/desktop, tablet/smartphone and software/apps you can access.

What makes an effective video?

There’s no hard and fast rule about what makes an effective teaching video. Every teacher is different and every class is different so find what works for you and your class. The age of your learners, the way you choose to share a video, whether you wish to have interactivity between shorter videos, and what you are trying to convey in the video, are all considerations to bear in mind. Being clear about what you are trying to share is the biggest consideration!  Consider, instead of a long video, chunking a lot of content into perhaps a series of shorter videos each with a specific focus. And try out what you are creating on different devices to see how your learners might view the video. Is it bright enough lighting so that what you are showing is clearly seen, can the sound be clearly heard? You don’t need to make a masterpiece the first time round (or indeed at any time!) so give it a go and make changes in light of your experiences and feedback from your learners.

Camera-Ready Educators: Video As a Learning Staple – a blogpost by Paul Teske and Sarah Brown Wessling which gives food for thought for teachers looking to create a teaching video: “…teachers know it’s not the screen alone that engages students. It’s how teachers use video as part of deliberate instructional design that creates the opportunity for learning and growth. Teachers use video in various ways for various purposes, each thoughtfully constructed.” That blogpost succinctly summarises and provides points for reflection for teachers using video whether it’s for teaching new content, differentiation, scaffolding and support, or for conveying information about such things as class announcements and routines.

The experiences of others can help you make your own judgement about what will work and then you have the feedback from your own class of learners.

This blogpost by Daisy Christodoulou provides a quick read to points to consider and links to research about designing video lessons

Video of teaching activity with your voice-over

If you are showing something you are writing – whether that’s simple phonics, handwriting formations, numeracy processes or anything else which involves writing – then you can point your phone/tablet camera at the paper or wipe-clean whiteboard, press record on the phone/tablet camera and start talking. Having your phone/tablet affixed to a tripod, a home-made stand or propped up so it won’t move is probably wise!

Keeping your video short is beneficial both for your own sake in not having to redo or edit a long video in which you wish to make a change, but also it’s helpful for sharing online somewhere to have smaller videos as they upload more quickly. If you are sharing on Twitter there is also a restriction on the length which will upload, but if sharing on your classroom digital platform you can add accompanying explanatory text, and perhaps have a sequence of short videos (each labelled with identifying text) so that pupils can more easily watch the parts as often as necessary for what they are doing.

Here’s example of videos shared by teachers where the camera is pointed at the writing area, and with the teacher voice added as narration, or using a class toy or puppet to provide the on-screen persona:

Blair Minchin has shared many imaginative teaching videos at @Mr_Minchn and @LittleLessons20

Taking video with your mobile device

The likelihood is that the device you have to hand for taking videos is your smartphone or mobile tablet, a device such as an iPad. And that’s perfectly fine for taking video to share with your learners.

If you want to find out about some of the inbuilt camera features as part of the camera app on an iPad then click on this link for a blogpost about time-lapse, slo-mo, burst-mode, and more on a smartphone or tablet 

10 Tips for Recording Better Video with Your Smartphone – a helpful blogpost by Maggie Tillman and Elyse Betters with tips for making better video with your smartphone.

Screen Recording on iPad

Whatever app you are running on an iPad then you can create a teaching video where you record whatever is on the iPad screen, where you can if you wish, add your voice-over to explain what your learners are seeing.

This infographic visual by Tony Vincent succinctly shows the steps to screen record and narrate on your iPad

Do you want to appear on camera beside your screen recording on an iPad? Then here’s how you can use split screen to record yourself on the iPad camera while recording activity on the iPad

Screen recording on a Windows desktop PC/laptop

If you have the latest version of PowerPoint then you have the facility to capture a video recording of whatever is on your PC/laptop – whether that’s the PowerPoint presentation or indeed anything on the PC which you wish to show to include in the video.

There are a number of other tools for Screen Recording, whether downloadable software or online. Click on this link for some more options including Screencast-o-matic and Smart Recorder

Turn your PowerPoint into a Video

PowerPoint has the option to create a video from your presentation. Just open the PowerPoint presentation and go to File > Export > Save as Video. This will incorporate all that you’ve included in timings, narration, animations, media, and transitions.

Greenscreen

If you wish to include yourself (or something else) in a video where the background is of something else, the subject of your video, then using the greenscreen facility available with some tools can let you, for instance, appear talking in front of a video of whatever you are teaching about.

Click on this link for a blogpost with a guide to using DoInk green screen iPad app to create videos using a greenscreen. This blogpost also includes lots of examples.

Click on this link for a guide to using the iMovie iPad app to achieve the greenscreen effect

The online tool unscreen.com provides the means to remove the background automatically from a video so that you can combine with another image or video and quickly create a greenscreen effect, without the need for any other equipment.

Stop-motion sequence of still images

Stop-motion animation videos can be useful to illustrate a teaching point where you have a series of still images. This can be useful where live action of a sequence of events is difficult to capture on video, or may take too long, or where you only have access to still images. You can create a sequence of still images using presentation software like PowerPoint (and export as a video to create the illusion of animation/movement) or drop them into video editing software/app such as iMovie on an iPad. Or you can use stop-motion software/app such as the iPad app Stikbot.

Stikbot iPad app

Click on this link for a blogpost about making a stop-motion animation using the Stikbot iPad app

Create an animation from presentation software

There is a host of tools which can be used to create animations:

Virtual Classroom

This video by Sarah Clark shows how she used Flipgrid to create and share a video in which she appears within part of the virtual classroom image

Editing your teaching video

There’s a host of video editing tools available. Chance are the device you have available has likely got something already there ready for you to use.

For Windows laptops/PCs then built into Windows 10 devices you will find Video editor (which replaced Windows Movie Maker, with which many teacher may already be familiar, from previous versions of Windows).

For iPads then available for free on iOS devices you will find iMovie and Apple Clips.

Creating and editing a film in the classroom with an iPad can be done with the iMovie app. Click on this link for a post about using iMovie on your iPad in the classroom (including examples) for help on getting started as well as tips on using some of the neat features such as adding video-in-video or picture in picture and more.

Apple Clips is a neat free video-creation app for iPad or iPhone. It lets you quickly combine text, music, graphics, recorded voice, images, and animations to create videos with ease. So if you are trying to find a way to explain a topic or a teaching point then you might find Apple Clips a handy way to create a visually engaging video. The inclusion of inbuilt graphics such as arrows, finger pointers and many more adaptable images make this really easy to highlight parts of photographs or video clips with explanatory text or spoken voice.

Sharing your video

You have many choices when deciding how to share you video. What platforms you have available to you for your school may determine the choice you make.

The following are just some of the ways you might share your video creations:

  • Using a school YouTube account – this option will let you share the link to the video in different places as well as provide an option to embed elsewhere such as a website or Sway. Depending on who you want to be able to access the video you can choose to have the video “unlisted” – that means only those who have the link can access it. It won’t be searchable and won’t appear on the list of videos on the YouTube channel.
  • Upload to your Microsoft OneDrive (available to all Glow users) and at the share option choose either to make it “share with anyone” (which means anyone with the link will be able to access and will not require to log into anything – and you can optionally choose to set a password and decide to block download) or you can choose “only my organisation” (which for Glow users means in order to access the link the viewer would require to log into Glow) – ensuring the share link is set to view-only, not edit.
  • Upload to Microsoft Sway (add a media card in a Sway and choose the video option and you can upload the video) – at the share option in your Sway you can choose to have it available to be viewed by anyone with the link, or only the organisation (Glow) and optionally add password if you wish. Having your video added to a Sway means you then also have the option to add text about the video and to add pictures related to it.
  • Upload to files in Microsoft Teams for your class or group – sometimes uploading larger files can be faster if you go to Files in your class in Microsoft Teams and then at the top right choose “Open in Sharepoint” then navigate to the folder “Class materials” which is read-only so that your class can view but not inadvertently remove the file.

Online Courses for Creating Teaching Videos

Click on this link for a free online course on the Microsoft Educator Centre – this free online course provides step by step guidance for how to create a teaching video and also has tips and advice about what to consider when you are making and sharing these with your class.

Apple Clips for Creating Videos for Sharing Learning⤴

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Apple Clips is a neat free video-creation app for iPad or iPhone. It lets you quickly combine text, music, graphics, recorded voice, images, and animations to create videos with ease. So if you are trying to find a way to explain a topic or a teaching point then you might find Apple Clips a handy way to create a visually engaging video. The inclusion of inbuilt graphics such as arrows, finger pointers and many more adaptable images make this really easy to highlight parts of photographs or video clips with explanatory text or spoken voice.

Likewise if learners in your classroom are trying to demonstrate their understanding of a topic being studied then this app can provide a great means for learners to illustrate their understanding of concepts.

The video below by Kristen Brooks uses Apple Clips app itself to provide a quick how-to guide, as well as an illustration of the app in use, to getting started creating a video using Apple Clips

 

Apple Education have a free downloadable guide called Everyone Can Create showing how to make use of Apple Clips app to support creativity in learning and teaching

Mark Anderson (@ICTevangelist) has created a how-to guide for using Apple Clips in the classroom

Alan Ellis shared a tutorial to getting started with using Apple Clips

Wick⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Last week I posted about the end of Flash, one of the thing I regretted was the loss of a tool to teach animation.
This week I noticed Wick: The Internet’s Free and Open-Source Creation Toolkit. This  works best with Firefox and Chrome. It make javascript animations that can be exported as a webpage. I’ve put one in the iFrame below.

Direct link: jj-test-wick

It looks like you can do a lot of cleave stuff with JavaSCript, but the editor supports the use of motion tweens and clips that can have their own timelines and tweens.

My skills in this department are limited, but if you look closely you will see the person in the animation is moving his arms and legs. They are a clip.

The flash vacuum is being filled before it exists.

Making Memes and Animated Gifs for Learning⤴

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memeanimatedlearningMemes and animated gifs abound in social media. You don’t have to look too long online to see these appear, often being shared and shared by many people via their social media accounts, or prominent on webpages or blogposts to draw in the reader to find out more about a story or data.

Having learners create their own memes or animated gifs can support their learning across all areas of the curriculum. The process of demonstrating understanding of a concept involves learners in reflecting on their learning, often discussing with others to test the depth of that understanding, and then finding creative ways to present the information to others. Where learners are encouraged to make these animated gifs or memes to demonstrate their understanding of concepts they are reflecting on what the key points are, they are summarising, in effect creating a visual précis of information.

So what is an animated gif?

Animated gifs are short animations lasting just a few seconds, sometimes just a sequence of related images, sometimes a short looping segment or clip of a video, sometimes a stop-motion style of inanimate objects brought to life to convey a message.

horsingaroundmemeAnd what is an image meme?

Image Memes generally may consist of a single photograph with text along the top and foot of the image, sometimes black top and bottom borders where bold white text is superimposed. The text is often in capitalised Impact font.

The text is usually very short and the text along the top can often be the draw to bring in the viewer, and then the text along the foot can spin the idea to make the reader reflect on the issue, often with humorous effect.

Where learners might make memes  and animated gifs

Animated gifs and memes present messages in a visual, attention-grabbing way, to make those who view them stop and think. The most thought-provoking memes and animated gifs distil what can be a complex concept into the main idea which can be understood in just a few seconds.

problem-shared-is-problem-halvedA Mental Health and Wellbeing project, AyeMind, (which inspired this blogpost after a presentation by Dr Trevor Lakey, Health Improvement and Inequalities manager with NHSGGC) developed by the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde along with partner organisations, has a fantastic website to be a part of providing positive mental health support for children and young people.

Part of this was about digital inclusion, and using the tools, platforms and means of communications familiar to children and young people to engage and share. Part of this project was enabling talking about mental health issues in a positive, supportive environment and giving the children and young people a voice and opportunity to make better use of the Internet, social media and mobile technologies. The memes and animated gifs on the AyeMind project website were created by children and young people as part of the project.

How to create an animated gif

There are a number of free online tools which let users create an animated gif. When using in an educational setting it would be prudent to check for suitability of advertising or galleries of user-created content which is rarely moderated.

Aye_Mind_ChooseaQuestionIdeally find a tool which just offers the tool for creation of the animated gif. Each tool which creates an animated gif may provide different options such as the limit on the number of images which can be uploaded, the option to control the speed or frame-rate of the animation, the size of the output animated gif image, and sometimes further options. Some simply provide the option for users to specify the location of an already uploaded video online, and the starting and finishing point for the clip animated gif to be created.

The Young Scot website AyeMind project page provides an excellent outline of an activity for involving children and young people in deciding on the message they wish to convey and then shows step-by-step how to use either an online tool or a mobile app to create an animated gif. There are also plenty of example of memes and animated gifs created by children and young people on the Young Scot website AyeMind project page and an outline guide providing the steps to running a session with children, young people or adults on coming up with the ideas and then moving to making the memes or animated gifs.

Online tools or mobile apps for creating an animated gif:

ABCyaABC.ya animator – aimed at being suitable for young children since it only permits drawn images or selection of pictures from an inbuilt galley of images.

GifMaker.me – animated gif creator with several options from which to choose in controlling how the animated gif will be presented, and provides the option to add music or even combine several animated gifs. As with any creation tool it provides the opportunity to explore sources of images and content found elsewhere, to use only where permission is granted and attribution given as required.

MakeAGif – provides the option to make a gif from an uploaded existing video or from an online source on YouTube, from which the specific segment can be selected. Be aware of the gallery of examples which would not all be appropriate for an educational setting.

EZGif – provides the option for animated gifs from multiple images (up to 400) or from video. There is advertising on the site but no gallery of user-created content.

Mobile device apps – many apps are available for smartphone or tablet to create animated gifs. Leslie Walker put together “Mobile GIF Guide: Make Animated GIFs on Your Phone” which lists several apps for mobile phones or tablet devices, along with descriptions of the features of each. Justin Pot gathered together “Making an animated gif is easier than you think with these  which lists online tools as well as mobile device apps, including descriptions and guidance as to how to make use of each. Elise Moreau collated a list of free animated gif creators for mobile devices at “9 Free GIF Maker Apps for iPhone and Android” describing each and providing helpful hints as to how each can be used.

Online tools or mobile device apps for creating an image meme

Any image-creation tool (or a presentation tool like PowerPoint) on computer, mobile or tablet device can usually be used for creating an image meme – wherever an image can be placed with the facility to overlay text either along the top and bottom of the image, or within a border of black along the top and bottom of the image for white text to be superimposed on these black panels. There are online tools but as with any free online tool a having unmoderated galleries of user-created content has to be a factor an educator looks at in assessing the suitability of a tool in an educational context, however the following may provide the teacher with ideas, guides as well as inspire an adaptation of an existing meme to suit the learning need. Meme creation online tools include imgFlip Meme generator, MemeMaker.Net, MemeGenerator.net, and ImageChef Meme Maker (be aware that all of these have galleries of user-generated content which would not generally be suitable in an educational context but selected memes may be shared by a teacher for showing examples).

Mobile device apps specifically for creating image memes have been collated on the AppCrawlr site “Best iOS apps for meme generator” and “Best Android apps for meme generator.” Mobile device users may well find they already have one of these apps as several have multiple purposes such as for editing images.

Reflections from the #IntelVisionaries Launch Event, October 2015: 6 of 17 – Transmedia⤴

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IntelVisionaries Banner

This is part of a short series of posts where I reflect on the inaugural Intel Education Visionaries meet up in Santa Clara, California in October 2015.

 ________________________________________________________  

I really enjoyed Dr Wayne Grant's Presentation on Transmedia Education. Much of the presentation was covered under NDA so I can’t share some of the things that we saw here but I am able to cover some of the more general points.

Firstly, if you unfamiliar with Transmedia Education then you might find this definition from Wikipedia helpful?

“Transmedia Storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling, cross-media seriality) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats including, but not limited to, games, books, events, cinema and television.“

I liked this this short animation that was shown at the start of the presentation that shows quite nicely the sorts of things that are now possible within the domain of real-life and digital story telling in a rapidly interconnected world.

 

Wayne was all about engagement (and why wouldn’t he be!) and I liked the model he shared on the stages of student engagement from rebellion through compliance to true (and deep) engagement.

Levels-of-Student-Engagement

I hadn’t really though about stages of engagement linked to student classroom behaviours before and I can see how I might use this as we continue to develop and build on our already successful our self-evaluation procedures at the school.

Wayne also talked about some emerging transmedia elements on the horizon and encouraged us to think about the power of custom software and custom hardware and how much more effective they can be if they are combined. 

To illustrate this we took a sneak preview of a number of quite interesting kickstarter projects such as:

 

 

Linkitz Kickstarter video May 2015 from linkitz on Vimeo.

 

We also looked at some more established products in the context of transmedia education such as:

 

 

 

 

Finally, he also mentioned Project MC2 (a Netflix commissioned original series).

 

Products like Project MC2  are exciting for me as they have very high production values but the learning behind them is also very sound. Kind of reminds me of lots of the work we used to do around commercial off the shelf (COTS) games at the Consolarium. I’ll be checking out MCas soon as I get a chance because the short piece that I saw was very impressive – I also heard that it has been recommissioned for a second season?

With Intel’s acquisition of Kno (now Intel Education Study) in recent times hopefully we will start to see more Transmedia elements built into their software stack?

BTW – if you like the idea of Transmedia Education then do check out Inanimate Alice which is just a first class super product.

Reflections from the #IntelVisionaries Launch Event, October 2015: 6 of 17 – Transmedia⤴

from

IntelVisionaries Banner

This is part of a short series of posts where I reflect on the inaugural Intel Education Visionaries meet up in Santa Clara, California in October 2015.

 ________________________________________________________  

I really enjoyed Dr Wayne Grant's Presentation on Transmedia Education. Much of the presentation was covered under NDA so I can’t share some of the things that we saw here but I am able to cover some of the more general points.

Firstly, if you unfamiliar with Transmedia Education then you might find this definition from Wikipedia helpful?

“Transmedia Storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling, cross-media seriality) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats including, but not limited to, games, books, events, cinema and television.“

I liked this this short animation that was shown at the start of the presentation that shows quite nicely the sorts of things that are now possible within the domain of real-life and digital story telling in a rapidly interconnected world.

 

Wayne was all about engagement (and why wouldn’t he be!) and I liked the model he shared on the stages of student engagement from rebellion through compliance to true (and deep) engagement.

Levels-of-Student-Engagement

I hadn’t really though about stages of engagement linked to student classroom behaviours before and I can see how I might use this as we continue to develop and build on our already successful our self-evaluation procedures at the school.

Wayne also talked about some emerging transmedia elements on the horizon and encouraged us to think about the power of custom software and custom hardware and how much more effective they can be if they are combined. 

To illustrate this we took a sneak preview of a number of quite interesting kickstarter projects such as:

 

 

Linkitz Kickstarter video May 2015 from linkitz on Vimeo.

 

We also looked at some more established products in the context of transmedia education such as:

 

 

 

 

Finally, he also mentioned Project MC2 (a Netflix commissioned original series).

 

Products like Project MC2  are exciting for me as they have very high production values but the learning behind them is also very sound. Kind of reminds me of lots of the work we used to do around commercial off the shelf (COTS) games at the Consolarium. I’ll be checking out MCas soon as I get a chance because the short piece that I saw was very impressive – I also heard that it has been recommissioned for a second season?

With Intel’s acquisition of Kno (now Intel Education Study) in recent times hopefully we will start to see more Transmedia elements built into their software stack?

BTW – if you like the idea of Transmedia Education then do check out Inanimate Alice which is just a first class super product.

Pixar: The maths behind the movies [@TedTalks]⤴

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The folks at Pixar are widely known as some of the world's best storytellers and animators. They are perhaps less recognized as some of the most innovative math whizzes around. I loved this TED Talk by Pixar Research Lead Tony DeRose which delves into the math behind the animations, explaining how arithmetic, trigonometry and geometry help bring Sheriff Woody and the rest of your favorite characters to life.

Just a shame computer animation doesn't appear in the SQA Lifeskills Maths Course!

Whats you favorite Maths video (under ten minutes) that is guaranteed to get kids excited about Maths?

NASA Space Sounds free to use on SoundCloud [@nasa @soundcloud]⤴

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Apollo Soundcloud

Following yesterdays post on the Open Content Toolkit I discovered that NASA has posted a massive library of ‘Space Sounds’ on SoundCloud. You are free to use all of these sounds as you wish, because NASA’s own audio isn’t copyrighted. It is meant to be a public service to the American people of their taxpayer-funded government program, but this ‘fair-use’ extends to everyone globally. They do ask you to list NASA as source, but that’s only reasonable. Read their content guidelines for full details. 

My favourite are the Apollo Sounds which include the classics ‘Eagle Has Landed, ‘Houston, We've Had a Problem and ‘We Have a Lift-Off’. But here are lots of other great sounds as well including rocket sounds, the chirps of satellites and equipment, lightning on Jupiter and interstellar plasma.

In short a great resource library for anyone interested in space, sound and film editing.

Oh, if you like Space Sounds this TED Talk (from 2011) by Artist-technologist Honor Harger is worth a watch (and a listen) as well…