Slowmation

=__**SLOWMATION **__=

Created by Gary Hoban from University of Wollongong, Australia, Slowmation is a new form of stop motion animation which allows students to illustrate their understanding of science concepts. If students have to plan and create a digital video to explain a concept to someone else, then they really have to understand it. Of course as all educators know, you don't truly understand something until you have to teach it to someone else. All those mental connections we make every day when we teach will happen for the students as they go about creating their videl. Gary has created an excellent website: [|http:// www.slowmation.com], with plenty of examples to view for yourself and to show your students. There are resources to help you with the pedagogical aspect of slowmation as well.

I was fortunate enough to meet Gary during an [|ESPRIT] workshop held at Salisbury University on April 18, 2009. Gary taught us the nuts and bolts to making a slowmation and gave us a chance to try. Below is my attempt to illustrate the term **motion**.

media type="file" key="MOTION.wmv"


 * So - I walked my students through the process of creating a slowmation**. I used the document camera connected to my LCD projector to take pictures or frogs moving over a green backgound with some grass as a reference point. I imported the pictures into SAM animation ( http://www.samanimation.com/ written by Tufts University for school kids to easily animate), modeled pulling the pictures in and recording voice over them. My students had created ppts and photostories during the year and were ready for the challenge of their first stop action video.

1. First they chose a partner, then they brainstormed topics on motion. 2. Each pair picked a topic on motion. 3. They had to use their textbook to research and explain their topic. 4. Students were then instructed to think about and discuss ways to create story with paper cutouts or 3D figures that I had in the classroom or they brought from home. I already had small cars for motion labs and had brought in legos left over from my own kids. I visited the Dollar Store and picked up dollar packets of plastic animals of all kinds. I now visit yard sales and look for boxes of action figures, legos, tinker toys, lincoln logs and little people. I had some foam letters from home as well. 5. Next step is the storyboard - they don't want to do this, or if they do, they want to put a lot of detail in it - remind them to save all the colorful detail for the actual set. 6. Then it is time to create their set, draw or create their actors and their props for their movie. 7. Once they could explain to me what they were going to do, could show me their entire set, word cards etc. AND they had several rehearsals without the cameras, then they were allowed to handle a camera. I had 1 document camera, 2 Kodak cameras on tripods and 2 other cameras they could use as handhelds. Word of caution - the students had to signout the cameras and they had to check them in as well as the SD cards BEFORE anyone was allowed to leave the classroom. ( Sad to say we had one camera stolen from my next door neighbors room and someone took an SD card out of one of my cameras - so set up a system for signing out!) 8. All of the above steps were only supposed to take 3 days but it was the end of the year, many field trips were taking place, lots of students absent so needless to say it took a week. 9. The final step of importing the images into SAM had difficulty because our district was dragging it's feet on installing SAM, I had students use Windows Movie Maker, the sound suddenly became an issue with WMM at our school. As a last resort, we used Photostory3 even though we had had issues throughout the year with losing the sound when students saved the photostory file. I finally figured out that I the teacher could save the file and convert it to a video without losing the dialogue - I'm telling you, some of the hoops we have to jump through. Anyway we have several really great projects to share, the students were totally engaged and for the last week of school, behavior was not a problem - no kidding!


 * My resources for Slowmation:** [[file:SLOWMATION PART 1.doc]] [[file:SAM directions.doc]] [[file:SAM directions.ppt]]

Positive Acceleration media type="file" key="Neecole.wmv"
 * Sample Student Slowmations:**

Unbalanced forces media type="file" key="Brandy Ciara and Cheyanne.wmv"

Terminal Velocity media type="file" key="awesomeee terminal velocityyyyy.wmv"