Case Study - St Mellion CE Primary, Cornwall

I attended one of Oscar Stringer's workshops at Launceston Primary and felt very enthused to get some animation work done in school. I only work one afternoon a week at St Mellion Primary (near Saltash) covering the PPA for a whole KS2 class, teaching their Art and D and T. We bought 'I Can Animate' for 5 computers and 3 Hue webcams  (2 we borrow). To date I have been using the software with 16 Year 6 children who have loved it. We have only done a few sessions to explore different techniques but results and ideas have far surpassed my expectations; we are now embarking on a more structured 'story' using modelling clay for figures. As yet we have not got a finished product to show, but hopefully we'll have something by the end of term.

My own IT skills are on the basic side so I get really excited if programs work for me! I have encountered the problem of importing the animations into Windows Media, it asks for 'encoder 9', hopefully this will be installed by our IT support guy. Our KS1 teacher is going to use the program with her class, with the Year 6 supporting the younger children, and in future terms I will use it with Years 3,4 and 5.
 

Amanda Copson -　St Mellion CE Primary, Cornwall

Case Study - Woodbury C of E Primary, Devon

Here at Woodbury school I set up an animation club just before summer half term for year four children. It runs for an hour straight after school on a Tuesday. We purchased 6 huey web cams which we used on the course. Because school does not have an Amazon account I had to personally buy them and then have school reimburse me - I think it would be useful if there was a better way for schools to purchase these excellent cameras (which by the way our class teachers have discovered they can use as visualisers). The children are working in groups of 3/4 (4 groups total) on a countdown animation for our KS1 classes to use on their smart boards as a tidyup timer for the children. The children have animated A4 sized outline numbers which they produced using word art going from 10 to predictably for the boys a rocket blasting off and the girl group have a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end. The boys groups chose not to cut out their numbers - the girls did. Personally I think that the girls numbers look better but the boys have drawn some interesting objects appearing inside their outline numbers. On the whole the girls have had more patience and were willing to put smaller pieces of movement in. The children have found I can Animate very easy to use and I know that they would like to do more - may be fuzzy felt stories could be the next step. Last week we exported their films into windows movie maker and they have added titles and credits to their films and a couple of groups began working to put the sound track on. I am hoping that this week will see all the sound tracks finished. One of the boy groups has interesting encouraging comments about how well everyone is dong with their tidying up including a humorous comment about 'you hiding in the corner get a move on!' I intend to put all four films onto a cd-rom for the parents to buy at a small charge. I'm sure we will be able to send you a copy of their animations.

As an HLTA I found it useful to run this club as it has helped me to embed all the things that we did with Oscar on the course. I am glad I took notes on the day. The year 5/6 teacher with whom I mostly work is also interested in the literacy advantages of animation and I think is planning to do some in the Autumn term. Maybe when they see our little animations the other members of staff may feel encouraged to do some too!

Sue Blower HLTA Woodbury C of E Primary School