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

Great Podcast from the ICT guy (ICTGUY0804 – Voice Thread, Remote Access & 1 to 1    Podcast number 4 April 7th, 2008. )-  The impact of Operating Systems (OS) on the way that students and teachers work was very interesting. Comparing the 3 OS, Windows, Mac and Linux and what the computer comes with suggests what they will be used for. The Mac systems come with a creative suite of tools that students use to create multimedia products, the Linux system comes with very little hard drive space but links to online communities encouraging collaborative and communicative work, while the Windows machines come with the Microsoft Office products suggesting that they will be used for….

An interesting idea but isn’t that often how change actually takes place. For example if we want to start using the intranet in our school as the main form of communication to reduce paper we actually have to stop giving people the option. Change will only genuinely happen when we eliminate the alternative- that is the paper version.

If this is true then educators can affect a change in the way students use computers through the operating systems of the computers so they must consider carefully what they want for their learning community when they are providing technology for the classroom.

In this podcast there was also a great recording from a conference about the benefits of one laptop per student in classrooms.

ICTGUY0804 – Voice Thread, Remote Access & 1 to 1    Podcast number 4 April 7th, 2008.