Well its been a while since my last post but that doesn't mean I haven't been working hard! After five fun packed weeks out on placement, I'm glad to be back at university to finish off the last two weeks of my course. One thing I can say after being out on placement though is that I'm glad I made the decision to be a teacher because I love it!
In this weeks lecture and workshop we covered the use of animation in primary schools. More specifically, how we can incorporate animation into all subjects across the curriculum. I found this to be very interesting and have learnt a number of different techniques that could be used to make learning in the classroom more fun.
The imaginative work of animation has the ability to keep a room full of people spell bound. Animation forms a significant part of movies, tv, cartoons, video games and even office presentations. Therefore, it is a fantastic idea to give students the chance to experiment with different types of animation whilst they are at school.
Throughout the workshop, Greg stressed the importance of exposing students to a wide variety of animation mediums, including paper, clay, plasticine, toys and even people.
The first thing that Greg had us do was visit the website http://www.dfilm.com/live/mm.html. We were required to use this website to incorporate a short animated film into our blogs. I personally found this process really fun and quite simple to set up. Whilst Greg stated that this may not be an appropriate website to use with students (due to some of the characters), it is easy to see how a similar website or program could be used by students. Something like this could be incorporated into websites, blogs or portfolios being designed and worked on by students in the classroom. Please find below a copy of my video entitled 'Christmas Eve'.
After this activity we moved onto http://www.buildyourwildself.com/. The activities on this website reminded me of the flip books I used to look at as a child, where you were able to change the head, body and legs of the monster. This would be a great website to be used in conjunction with a book like 'Where the Wild Things Are'.
It gives students a great opportunity to work with their own creative flair in which everyone can have a go without feeling as though they have completed the task incorrectly. To the right you can see what my picture looked like. Students then could incorporate these pictures into an art or creative writing activity. The possibilities are endless!
In our workshop, we also had the opportunity to use the following website http://www.sketchswap.com/. This is a website in which students are given the opportunity to sketch whatever they like. Once students have completed their sketch, they are required to select the 'submit drawing' button. Once this button has been pushed it swaps the students sketch for one drawn by someone else. Please find below the sketch I received.
Whilst this is all good and fun to do, I am a little concerned by the fact that you never know what picture you are going to receive (Is the picture going to be appropriate?). Therefore, I would probably not use this website in one of my classes.Another website that Greg introduced us to was http://www.reasonablyclever.com/. This website had a child friendly section where students would be able to create their own Lego men or women! Once again, linking in with the concept of animation. Students could possibly create characters that could be used in a story they were writing and then print and cut out the characters to be used in the pictures. A picture of one of the characters I created can be found below.
Greg next had us all concentrating very hard as he tested our spelling and typing skills with a dictation activity. We were all required to turn off the monitors on our computers and type the passage Greg read to us. This was a clever task that got you thinking about the words you were writing. It also promotes skills other than using the 'spell check' function on a computer (e.g. sounding out, listening, thinking - does the word I'm writing make sense in this sentence? etc.). The passage that Greg used was entitled 'An Ode to a Spell Checker' and can be found at the following website http://everything2.com/title/
There were so many things covered in this workshop that it is not possible to include them all in this blog. What I will say, is that everything that we were shown was worth having a look at, even if you don't think you would use them in one of your lessons, they may spark other clever ideas.
Here is a list of some other useful websites you may wish to utilise:
Well this is my final post for this subject. It has been an interesting journey but I can honestly say that I have learnt a lot. I look forward to going out into a classroom next year and implementing a fun and exciting curriculum that incorporates many of the benefits found in ICT.
