Creating and Using Animation in the Classroom

Facilitator: Dr. Bruce Ellis (@DrBruceEllis)

You don't have to be high tech to create and use animation in the classroom. Join us to learn about simple tools and how they can support student learning.

Why Use Animation...

Interest-grabber
Animated gifs can go in Google Docs
Helps students understand complex topics
Supports comprehension of text
Allows students to demonstrate understanding of learned concepts

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Search Results: using animation in the classroom with students http://bit.ly/aniResources

Making animations

Google Slides

http://slides.google.com/

Google Slides allows you to create frame animation much as you would if you were creating an old-fashioned flipbook or creating cell animation back in the day with Disney. To save your animated deck as a gif, use a tool such as Tall Tweets.

Synfig Studio

https://www.synfig.org/

Synfig Studio is a professional-grade (but FREE) 2D animation application with all the must-have features, and plenty of additional ones as a bonus. If you're after fast and efficient animation, Synfig Studio is the one to use. It's got a learning curve when compared to cell animation, but the elimination of tweening pays off in the end.

Blender

https://www.blender.org/

Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline.

hands-on practice

We'll use the Respiratory System (click to copy to your Google Drive) slide deck to create our animation. Phases of the Moon slide deck is also available for you to practice with and use.

A few points to remember:

Edit the Master Slide to have the 'background' image that doesn't move. This could be the scenery or, as in this example, the body.
The more slides you make and the shorter the movement between slides, the smoother the animation will be.
Go to FILE --> Page Setup and change the dimensions to pixels to get the pixel width for Tall Tweets.
If you want a title screen to show longer, duplicate it multiple times.
Animated gifs can be inserted in Google Docs (mp4 files cannot), Google Slides, Google Forms, and Google Sites.

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