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July 30, 2007
Four rural New England primary schools have embarked on a project that will make available to them a whole new medium of storytelling: animation.
Teachers and parents from Kentucky, Kelly's Plains, Woolbrook and Kingstown Public Schools spent a day at the University of New England earlier this month, learning and practising the animation techniques they'll need to teach their students.
UNE's Dr Chris Reading, who led the workshop, said that animation offered educators "an electronic form of storytelling" that was becoming increasingly popular in schools.
The procedures involved include creating the characters (often in clay) and the backgrounds, taking a series of photographs, and using computer software to bring the photographs to animated life. Using the skills developed in the full-day workshop and two follow-up sessions after school, the teachers and parents will now be starting to work with their students. They will return to UNE with the students on Friday 28 September for an "Animations Premiere", at which groups of students will judge each other's work.
Malcolm Airs, the Principal of Woolbrook School, said animation was a way of getting schools started on "the broader use of technology in the classroom". In a range of subjects, he said, "technology really does help". He explained that animation projects had the potential to benefit students not only in aspects of art and language, but also through the development of the inter-personal skills required for such cooperative activities.
The "Animating Learning" project is being funded by the National Centre of Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia (SiMERR), based at UNE.
THE PHOTOGRAPH of an animation "set" displayed here, taken during the workshop, expands to show UNE's Dr Chris Reading (standing, centre) working on an animation project with Malcolm Airs (Principal) and Janelle Smith (a parent) from Woolbrook Public School.
Posted by Jim Scanlan at July 30, 2007 11:24 AM