Animated Guide to Creative Thinking

2011 Rethink Scholarship at Langara Call for Entries from Rethink Canada on Vimeo.

An interesting animated video on better ways of developing your ideas, which is an introduction to a competition hosted by Langara Higher Learning College in Canada:

http://www.rethinkcanada.com/us/rethink-scholarship/

Animation Potential

Documentary - Animation during KS3 Art Club

Our department has been piloting some extra-curricular animation workshops with KS3 students (mostly year 7) and found a large number of boys interested, which is a change form the past when it has mostly been girls. At first we had over 35 students, but had to cap this number. There was a huge interest in being able to tell a story through stop-frame animation and the fun in being able to create sets, invent characters, add spontaneous elements and, perhaps most interestingly, work constructively as a team. If you want to see the video, please enter the name of the subject that Ms Powell teaches or email me and I'll send you the password. I would be interested in working with other subject teachers to use this process to engage students and help support their learning.

Animation summary of Ken Robinson's speech at RSA

Have a look at this great method of explaining key concepts using animation involving a speech by Ken Robinson:



Here are a few more animated concepts commissioned by the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA):

Surprising Truth about Motivation



21st Century Enlightenment

Scientific Explorations

This is a good example of how animation can be used to help explain difficult concepts using real-time footage and underlying invisible elements such as magnetic fields. In photography, we teach students about exposure by getting them to experiment with long-exposures in the darkroom and LED lights to create beautiful abstractions, but it also allows them to understand how photography is literally about 'drawing with light'. Here are some examples by students:








This shot was taken by Lydia Francis recently to capture a firework display:



In addition, we also capture scenes using a very quick shutter speed as in these examples:







Having spoken recently with Mr Wagle, the Senior Science technician, we will be setting up a lesson where my year 10 GCSE students document an experiment conducted by year 13 students. I like the idea of working with departments to teach our Photography course, however, I would imagine it working very well with an Applied Arts course or diploma for students that need more of a structure to channel their creativity.

Teaching through Animation

GoAnimate, the web 2.0 free animation software site, is excellent and very easy tool to edit with. I had a little play with it for a year 8 ICT lesson in 2009. Here's my result... albeit not the funniest of comic animations:

GoAnimate.com: Ain't No Respect by Mr Z


The students really enjoyed using it to create narratives. Here is an example by Oni, who got a little carried away with some fairly 'unethical situations'..... which might be interesting to explore in Citizenship!

GoAnimate.com: Hayley And Marley by MszOnzi

Y7 Animation Club

Group Animation Export, originally uploaded by Fortismere Art & Photography Department.

As part of our Art Club schedule this term, we have asked students Miguel Garcia and Sam Reinders to run an animation club for Year 7 students. The students particularly enjoy stop-frame animation. In this test, they used themselves as human statues to stage a mock fight (their idea??!).

I think that using older students to support with creative projects has a great deal of potential to both alleviate staff from being always responsible for extra-curricular activities and promoting the idea of learners teaching learners i.e. peer mentoring. I believe that the Sixth Form could be used much more constructively across the school.

We are going to try and worm our way into the new Music Block since the iMacs aren't currently used downstairs on a Wednesdays...