Occupation: Primary Teacher
Leading Teacher for ICT, Intel Master Trainer, Currently completing my Masters of Information Technology in Education and just completed Teacher Professional Leave investigating IWBs, pedagogy and coaching.
Interests: ICT in Education, web2.0, global collaboration, constructivist education.
My students have been creating little animations to explain a simple concept such as the life cycle of a plant in grade 2 or a simplified explanation of Global Warming in grades 3 and 4(you can see examples here). The animation project was a bit of an experiment as we hadn’t used Sam Animation before. I’m pleased to say it has been a great success and I can see that the process has possibilities for many areas of the curriculum. SAM Animation is free software as I’ve explained in a previous post.
In a nutshell
we used Tux Paint (also free software that you can read about here)to draw a series of pictures and then
import the pictures into Sam Animation.
we created a series of sound files to narrate the animation
import the sound files into Sam Animation.
export to movie
It was easy to adjust the length of the pictures to the length of the sound and to finish off we added a title slide. The final step was to export the completed animation to a movie format that we could upload onto our blog.
This is the detailed work flow for making an animated movie using Tux Paint and SAM Animation. The project can be completed quite quickly by taking advantage of the easy save features in Tux Paint.
Step 1.
Open Tux Paint and create and save the beginning picture for your series of pictures. The key to this, is to choose a topic that you can illustrate as a continuous process by adding a bit more to your picture each time. Add a bit and save but use “No. save a new file!” to quickly build up a bank of illustrations. Remember to save often until you have a number of pictures to illustrate your story or concept.
Step 2: SAM Animation
Open SAM Animation and create a new project. Click on the “Manage Time Line” section to import the pictures you made in Tux Paint.
Navigate to the “saved” folder where Tux Paint saves all the images. This is the trickiest bit of the process because the SAM import pictures looks for JPEG format images but Tux Paint are PNG format images so it can appear that your “saved folder is empty!
Once the pictures are on the timeline you can adjust the speed of the animation using the “fps” slider under the play buttons or the slider above the import buttons which will adjust the selected frames. (See above “Sam screen shot 1″ )
Step 3: Audio
You can import a music and or a narration or record directly into SAM Animation. Importing is as simple as using the button next to the import pictures. Once you have your sound on the track you can stretch or shrink your movie to match using the button. There are two sound tracks so you can have a mixture of voice and music.
Step 4: Movie
The final stage of the process is to export the animation as a movie. There are a multitude of choices but I have found that .Avi works well for us.
SAM Animation is another fantastic piece of free, cross platform, software that is ideal for schools. SAM originally stood for “Stop Animation Movies” which indicates what it does. The software has been designed by the TUFTS Centre For Engineering, Education and Outreach, with the noble purpose of:
- increasing student and teacher excitement for learning STEM;
- improving student & teacher skills so learning is more enjoyable in all subjects;
- increasing the general public’s technological literacy, and
- increasing the awareness of the importance of STEM for society.
SAM Animation is easy enough for primary aged students to use, with impressive results, but would be equally suitable for older students or adults wanting an application to illustrate a concept or tell a story. It has a variety of sophisticated tools to capture, import and manipulate images and sound. It even has the ability to apply the chroma key effect.
Once you have finished your animation there are options to export it into various movie formats which means it is portable for home computers and easily published to a blog or wiki.
The SAM Animation site has a very thorough “help” section with easy to follow movies. It has links to “Latest Animations”, “Related Web Sites”, research, a forum and community. You can try the online version or download it for your personal use or for educational research. If you register as an educator your principal will need to verify the details that you have supplied but then you are able to use SAM in your school. All this and its free! Schools should definitely make the SAM investment - their students will love it.
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.
Step 3: Audio
