Loisath-My ICT Journey

I was fortunate to hear Peter Reynolds speak and to receive a free copy of his software “Animation-ish“  while at the Constructivist Celebration @ NECC09 in Washington. This is the one piece of software that I would like to put on my school’s 2010 budget. Peter Reynolds is an inspiring speaker, a talented artist and author.

• I admire the philosophy behind the development of Animation-ish.
  • Peter Reynolds believes in giving children a chance to play and experiment through their passions and unique abilities. Animation-ish is designed to give them the opportunity to express themselves through drawing and animation with the ‘ish’ concept that tells the world ‘back off, I’m trying to figure this out, and right now this is the way I do it’ – gives us some room to play, experiment, LEARN.
• I think it is easy to use but creates a sophisticated finished product in a reasonable amount of time.
  • You can draw with Animation-ish in three very intuitive levels, “Wiggledoodle-ish”, “Flipbook-ish” and “Advanced-ish”.  It is best to have a tablet to draw with but many students these days are used to drawing with a mouse. Animations can be looped and exported in a number of formats. You can read a more detailed review here.

• It has excellent support material, is generally very appealing and works well with the web 2.0 publishing world of today.
  • It has excellent tutorials and “Inspire me” files to get you started. You can register for a series of tutorials taking you through each level of Animation-ish

My first little animation – just so that you can get the idea how simple it is – created in less than an hour.

The only problem is the cost. I was hoping for a whole school site license for less than $2000 (our school has 750 students) but it appears it can only be bought as a volume license for 25 computers at that price. Our school would need 4 or 5 times that just to cover the computers for students in grades 3 to 6. As much as I love it, and can see its advantages, that is far too much in our budget… I can only hope that a whole school site license is released at a more manageable cost.

I’ve just read another blog with a similar view of the Animation-ish software and its value for the classroom.

More Links – The Live Wire