Animation

Throughout this module I have discovered various ways in which technology can help encourage learning. One aspect I found very interesting was animation. Animation is the creation of images that alter through movement and shape change. Animation is a visual representation of a product that appeals to younger children as it is colourful, engaging and creative. Not only can animation help children express themselves, but it is also a perfect way to allow children the freedom to explore and re-create what they have learnt during lessons (a reflection sort of speak). Here is my animation that I created using 2animate, it is a dustbin baby. 2animate is a perfect app that can be used by children from the age of 6-11, it is also available for specialist schools.

If I was to provide an overview of the application I would say that 2animate is appropriate for children between the ages of 5-10 as it is most suitable for this age range. Its objectives are simple as it has the sole intention of making learning more enjoyable and enabling children to learn through visual means. 2animate is simple to navigate and I believe there is no need for guide lines as it is an app that can be "played about with" to discover how to use the device. There is a need for registration however,  but you can have a free trial before buying the app permanently.

During this module I also experimented with another animation programme called GO animate.com.

OVERVIEW:

Go Animate is an app for creating and publishing animated videos. Go Animate allows individuals to develop narrative videos, where characters speak with lip-sync, the use of props and the moving around of characters on screen. All videos have backgrounds, music and effects.
GO animate is a more advanced form of animation therefore I would recommend its use by older primary school children from 9 years of age and above. It has various background settings and real life cartoons which will appeal more to older children as they have more awareness of these people e.g Obama, Batman and Cupid. GO animate has six objectives these include: Representing diversity, giving contexts to ideas, bend the laws of nature, exploring different ways to create, changing thoughts into visuals and to strike the right tone. GO animate is very simple to access, simply search the hyperlink and it will take you straight to the home page where you will click 'make a video' then the variety of different themes will appear and your animation will be created from there.

http://goanimate.com/

There is a full tutorial guide provided on the website simply just follow the link http://goanimate.com/videomaker/full/tutorial There is a free trial, however to buy this app it is very costly! For example, for the use of one teacher and 30 students it would cost $100 for one academic year. You need to create an account by registering and this is where all of your animations will be saved to, however this is free of charge. It is a simple tool to use BUT it could be seen as complicated for the use of younger children.