Stop Motion Animation on a Budget in your Classroom.

We all love a good story, getting hooked as it keeps you on the edge of your seat as you wait impatiently in suspense for what comes next.  Have you ever wondered to yourself if that story could be changed ever so slightly so that it could literally come to life.  Now I know some of you just raised your hand, your eyebrow or smirked a little thinking hey Evan isn't that what movie studios are for?  Well in some way that's correct but how many of us have 1000's of dollars to put a movie together.  I know that I do not have that kind of money just like many other teachers as well.

You could try things out using Stop Motion Animation as an activity to extend the learning in your classroom.  How many stories have you read to or had your students read where you thought you could extend the learning by having them create a product, maybe an animated movie?  How about those social studies facts that could translate into an individual or class project?  Maybe some of those science experiments which yielded ground breaking discoveries.  Why not try it out and see what could happen.

Now I have looked through numerous websites and other resources to learn about how to create Stop Motion Animation videos and by far I am no expert on the subject based on what I have read.  I am just someone that can share a little information that could possibly offer up some fun and creativity for your students in your classroom.

The big question now is how do you start and how much is this going to cost?  Let me address the cost issues right now.  I am one of those big proponents for anything free or at such a low cost that it is ridiculous, because I am always looking for it due to working in education.  So let's take a look a a few things that you may have around you right now.

What you need: besides a location to create your stop motion movie which just needs to be a clear space.  A camera - that is the easiest one.  You probably have a few items that you can use that you did not even think about.

• Laptop
• Document Camera
• Digital Camera
• Tablet device
• Cell Phone

Supplies: there are a myriad of things that you can use and of course some of them can be free since you may already have access to them right now in your own home or there are students that have brought them into the classroom.  You can even, and I have done this, ask around to see who has some of these items that they no longer want.

• A light source
• Clay
• Play Doh
• legos
• Action Figures
• Dolls
• Paper
• Construction Paper

Now the most important thing you need to get started is the idea.  You want to make sure that you keep it to something that can be done fairly quickly where your students will succeed at it.  Once you have your idea set then have your students begin creating their story boards of the project.  You can provide students with a rubric that outlines your expectations, you can use Rubistar to create one if you want otherwise MS Excel or Google Sheets are good choices.  Have then write a script that can either be be done as a voice over or could be done as panels in the video.  Let them choose their supplies to create the video and then let them have some fun.  Let them be as creative as they want to be.

Now if you need to or want to use an App there are more than a few out there that you can use, but just to remind you of the title of my blog post.  We want to keep things on a budget, so here are a few FREE apps out there you could use.

• iMovie - iOS
• Stop Motion Studio - iOS
• PicPac Stop Motion & timelapse - Andriod
• Stop Motion Animator - Chromebook

This is just a few and by all means please share apps that you use in the comments below.

Preparing Rising 6 & 9th Graders with Multimedia

As a 6 and 9th grade teacher you prepare every year to get a brand new crop of wide eyed students that have no idea of what they are in for as they move into Middle and High School.  Most of these students will not get much information in the way of what to expect as they move from one school to the next.  This is a big step for either grade level.  So what can we do to prepare them?

Most of these students will not know what to expect until the first day of school.  It can be overwhelming to some perplexing to others and even frightful to a few.  So how do we help prepare our students for the next level of our education?  Well let's see if we can reach them on their level and make it fun and make it fun at the same time.  Why not create a real world scenario using Problem-Based Learning to have your current students design a video for incoming students to help ease their minds and answer some of their questions.

It makes a good argument for teachers to build off the Research Writing that falls into the fourth quarter curriculum.  As well it can bring in needed Information Technology Essential Standards that may not normally be seen in the classroom on a regular basis.

The Scenario:

You are a rising 6/9th grade student and you do not know what to expect from the school that you are getting ready to start in the fall.  What information would you want to know about ahead of time so that you are prepared on the first day of school?

From this your students should be able to:

research information about the school

create a list of possible questions 

produce a video outlining what a rising student would need to know.

So then it comes down to what do you need to know to be a 6/9th grader?  Have your students collaborate to come up with ideas on what the most important things are that they should share about the school.  Let them be as creative as they want to be, the sky is the limit.  Some of your students will more than likely surprise you with what they come up with.  

It is a great focusing activity for the end of the year as well for your students that might be starting to tune out due to the impending summer vacation.  Most will not even realize that they are doing something curriculum based or part of a lesson because they will be entrenched in creating a video project.  

Who knows you might have a up and coming screenwriter, director or actor in your class and this will become the launching pad for their career.  

photo credit: MACSD via photopin cc

Green Screening Made Easy

OK, so most of you know from reading my blogs or if you have met me know that I am not a Mac person.  I am the farthest thing from being one it seems with the educational company that I keep.  But I have to say that over the past few months I have been working on some small video projects especially with Green Screens and have been having a lot of problems with it on my PC.  So a few weeks ago when I was at my State technology conference I sat in on a workshop entitled Green Screen Cafe which has made me think it could be time to switch over to another platform for video editing.

The presenters were from an area school system that have adopted the Mac platform for creating and designing some really unique projects using Green and Split Screening tools in the classroom.  From what they discussed the students really liked the projects and have enjoyed doing them all year.  Two of the presenters were from an Elementary School and the third was from a High School.

They started out the presentation saying that it does not take very much to start green screening video work.  Three things are needed to get started.  A Green Screen, video camera and iMovie (Apple product, but you know that) and that is all you need to get going they said.  They did offer up some suggestions for low cost alternatives for green screen and video cameras. 

Green Screen Alternatives:

• green bed sheet
• green curtains
• paint a wall green

Video Camera

• flip cameras
• cell phone cameras
• document cameras

So I started thinking to myself in this room of mac users, I am totally in over my head until they started to show us how to create a quick green screen movie with iMovie.  I was amazed at how fast they did it, just minutes and we had a completed product.  They started out by telling us that there is one setting that has to done in order for things to work correctly.  In iMovie you have to change the General, Preferences list and put a Check in the box for Show Advanced Tools - Green Screen.  This allows the Green Screen options to show in the iMovie options when editing video.

So they started out by telling us that we need to pull in the background image first, that will show through the green screen.  Then overlay the video, with the green screen back drop, on top of that image.  Make any necessary edit to the clips and there you go.  An instant green screen video in under five minutes.  Now they did say that the videos that you will be using need to be in .mov format but that is easy if you are pulling from another video source.  Just use Zamzar or any other of your favorite file conversion sites to convert the video into this format.  And you can get background images and/or video using a Creative Commons search if you do not have your own images.

With all the pains I have gone through with the PC side of creating green screen videos, I might now have to go out and take a look at iMove and maybe possibly purchasing a Mac product for myself to use.

So what are some ways that you can use this in education?  How about these:

• Planets/space
• create virtual tours of foreign lands
• lighthouses
• county-wide read-a-longs
• historical skits
• Christmas around the world
• meet your teacher
• election videos
• candidate interviews