7th Grade Animations

7A and 7C have successfully completed their digital animation work for the year. They created their animations using digital cameras and tripods, webcams, and iPads. They were given the choice of  using the following techniques: Pixilation, Stop Motion, Paper Puppets and drawing.

Toki Line test, iStopMotion and Animation Desk were used to produce the animation footage, once the storyboarding was done. The videos were edited on iMovie on the iMacs.  They had a lot of fun working with new applications and and trying things out with the different techniques. They also got a chance to reinforce previous chromakey work using the green  and blue screens. Have a look at some of their finished videos.

Favourite iPad Animation Apps

This is a guest post by my colleague, Rodrigo Alfaro, based on our animation work with iPads this school year.




We recently purchased a dozen iPads for teacher and student use in the LRC. These iPads are used for many tasks, including animation. We have found a great many useful apps for animation which we hope others will find useful as well.

  Animation Desk Lite for iPad This app has the most features for classical (drawn) animation. Its greatest limitation is that you can only create three scenes in the Lite version. Even so, it is quite a robust application; it includes different pen and brush types, multiple layers of animation, variable frame rates, onion-skinning and even a digital stamp tool which allows you to cut and paste as well. This application is ideal for patient students who have a drawing vocation and enough passion to pursue the completion of one project for a period of time. This application also feels more intuitive if you use a stylus to draw. Animation Desk will allow you to save a scene to the Photo Library (Camera Roll) as a movie, which can then be emailed or exported to a computer with the USB cable.

iStopMotion 
This application is designed for pixilation (sequential picture) sequences. The interface is very simple to use and understand, because as soon as you open the program there is a small tutorial which guides you through the basic functions of the app. When a clip is created, the front or back camera is activated and you can start shooting right away. The tricky part is to keep the ipad as still as possible, so the animation is not jarring and inconsistent. Often times, the best method involves placing the iPad in a static position in front of where the action will take place. Since this is a purchased app, there is no limit to the amount of scenes available to shoot. You also have the option to play back the animation at different speeds. When your sequence is done, you can export to the Photo Library and email your movie from there.

Animation Express
 This application is simple to use. It is very similar in style to Animation Desk, but the interface is less complicated. Even so, it is powerful enough to be able to do rotoscoping (drawing on pictures). It includes 2 modes: the regular drawing mode (which includes, brushes, colour swatches, a stamp tool and a smudge tool), as well as the animating mode, (which includes adding, subtracting or duplicating frames, variable frame rate, a sound recorder and export functionality to get your video out of the ipad and unto a computer. Other features (with the free version) include a shape tool, a Paint Bucket tool which is used to paint large areas of your drawing. This program is accessible and simple enough for those who find Animation Desk too complicated.

Favourite Extension and App

I have a huge list of favourite extensions and apps that I love. My Chrome address bar is now minuscule as the result of me adding so many favourite Chrome extensions to my account.

There are only a few extensions in particular however, that I use many times a day without fail. Diigo is definitely one of them. I won't go into that now as I have written about it in the past.

Post to Blog
Diigo Groups for Student Content
My Wish Lists for Diigo and SimplyBox(now defunct)

Evernote clipper is one I plan on using more often, but funny enough one of my most useful extensions is the seemingly measly little goo.gl shortener. Now there are plenty of shortener extensions and apps out there, but this one has been with me from the on start and it works every single time. It is not only reliable, but fast and it generates a little QR code along with the shortened URL. It is this QR code that is so important to me.

Big deal you might say. QR codes are everywhere, they're certainly not new, so what is the big deal? Timeliness and reliability are both important here. I work on both a Mac and an iPad each day as do our students. Emailing links, or even bookmarking and then accessing them on Diigo (which I love) or tweeting them for example, seems to take too long, too many seconds spent opening up applications. Really,  I don't necessarily want these particular links taking up space in my Diigo account etc. Often we need the link in a pinch, while in the midst of a project.  At other times we generate them in advance, to use in directing the kids to starter activities, or as components of our online lessons.  We use one of my favourite iPad apps, i-nigma, to capture these QR Codes.

I have been loving this system for a while and decided that it deserves sharing.

Hold on....i-nigma is another application to open up, so why am I whinging about lost time?


The question is easily answered by answering another...Why do I love it?
It is free, it loads immediately, it is extremely reliable and it captures the QR Code without any kerfuffle. I don't even have to really focus it with the mobile device. I have stood at the front of my classroom and basically waved my iPad across the screen and it captures the code!!!

Getting a link to the iPad in a flash:
Basically what I do is generate the QR Code on the Mac and open it with i-nigma, that other app I absolutely love to bits. This opens it on the iPad where I can then use it in whatever project we are working on. This is great for working with citations of images the kids may have collected and sharing important links with each other.

Generating a link for starters or further investigation:
All you need to do is generate a QR code for the poll, reading selection, video etc, that you are using as a starter and having it up on your computer when the kids come in, ready to capture. I open mine in preview and they zoom very nicely, so even the kids at the back of the room can capture them with ease if needed.

Capturing on the spur of the moment:
Sometimes you may have reason to go off on a tangent and really want to share something with them for later followup or discussion. Just go to the page you want to share. Activate the extension and voila...you have a qr code for them to scan.

i-nigma is free for iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and goo.gl shortner is a free extension from the Chrome Store,so there is no reason not to try it out.

It's a Rap-A Better World Project

Two of my fellow ICT teachers and myself will be presenting our A Better World Project at the Global Education Conference, this Wednesday at 3:00 Central time. Do pop in if you get a chance and learn more about how your students can learn more about global issues through collaborative writing, audio and video work.

http://www.globaleducationconference.com/page/2012-conference

GTA 6 Month Reflection

It has been 6 months since I had the pleasure of attending the Google Teacher Academy in London. I learned a great many new things at the Academy, many of which I have been able to apply in my teaching and also pass on to teachers at my school and those in my community. It is a great feeling to be a part of this process, sharing ideas with others and watching them get excited about them. It is often the  little things that make an impact. People find them easier to take on and are usually keen in identifying those skills, or tools that they can make best use of.

As part of the  GCT process I had to draw up an action plan. I could have chosen to create a teaching website but I already had one, or the training that I do at school, but again that would have been cheeky of me as teaching and supporting teachers is part of my job. We were asked to choose something that would make a difference, change the world so to speak. I had received a proposal from an NGO in Canada to help establish a learning lab for underprivileged students living in the countryside, in El Salvador. That is what I chose to build my action pan around.

Things don't always turn out quite as expected. We had big dreams for the lab and still do, however our initial ideas have been put on hold.  It has been difficult find a safe location for the lab, that also provides easy access for the students. Instead we have focussed our energy on working with the teachers who will be using the lab once it comes to be.

We are programmed to begin our first Saturday session this coming Friday, and will meet once a month for training sessions, until Christmas. After that our meetings will take place once every 3 months. I have set up a progression of topics that we are going to focus on and produced a schedule for them. We will begin with communication and collaboration and culminate in working on setting up an online presence for the teachers to use with their students and community.

Here is the progression for the project:

Change does not come easily. It requires patience and plenty of hard work. Forgive the cliche, but it is often true that even the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. In this case I have taken a detour and am following a detour I had planned to travel slightly later on in the process. My action plan will take at least a year to bring full circle and their is plenty to be done during that time. 

What makes it worth the effort is the enthusiasm of the individuals involved, those helping to make the change happen, either as teachers or supporters and those who through this process will be the ones to bring about a multitude of change, as they take their learning back and implement their ideas in their own schools and classrooms. 

I will be reflecting on this journey as we progress through it during this year, and am excited to be able to share our milestones with anyone who is interested in reading about them. 

It is Theatre Week at the LRC

Students are invited to come along to the mask making workshops after school in the LRC each day to make cool masks and even help prepare a short performance! 

They are also encouraged look at the Who Said That? posters outside of the LRC. 

A few of them are included below. Can you figure out which theatrical character spoke those words?

Students can record their answers on the papers provided and add their own favourite theatrical quotes to the empty speech bubble posters.

Happy Theatre Week!

It is Banned Books Week this Week?

It is Banned Books Week this Week! Many books are banned each year and it has been this way throughout history. What is censorship? Why do people and organisations ban books? 

Do you agree or disagree with this practice? Does the LRC ban books? 

Follow this link if you would like to know more and check out the banned books display in the LRC.