Animation in the Classroom

The use of animation in the classroom can be endless!  Animation is useful in engaging students and illustrating difficult concepts. It can spice up your lessons and you can have your students create their own animations. In this way they can visually represent what they are studying in order to understand the material better.

The Kent School District in the UK, for example, uses animations in the classroom, especially to support literacy skills across the curriculum.  “Pivot Stickfigure Animator” is a free software program that can be accessed at http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Pivot_Stickfigure_Animator/stickfigure.html.  This program allows you to create your own stick figure animations whose sections can be moved and the animation frames can be previewed and edited as they are created. You can also use more than one stick-figure in the animations and by using the visual editor, you can create your own stick figures using objects out of lines and circles. Additionally, you can set the animation size, speed, etc and the result can be saved as animated GIF file.

Other websites that can be utilized by teachers include: