In today's Education Futures session, we presented our animation assignments to our group, giving us a chance to watch each others and discuss what we found enjoyable/difficult etc. It was interesting to see the different techniques that had been used, and what effect this has on the end products. I particularly enjoyed Tristan's project, as he had based it on the classic fable 'The Lion and the Monkey'. He used children's toy figures for his characters and props, which allowed him to manipulate them easily, creating a consistent, flowing film. I was particularly impressed with the setting for his film, as he used real plants and leaves to create some movement in the background of his scenes. Upon discussion, Tristan explained that he had planned his animation carefully, using a drawing board of time frames, to set out what was going to be filmed in each scene. In my own opinion, this planning shows through the quality of his end product. He also managed to keep his lighting fairly consistent, and the placement of his props.
The animation was teamed up with various sound effects, including narration from Tristan himself. My only piece of constructive criticism would be that there were not enough sound effects included in the overall piece, leaving it with a few quiet parts. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the animation, which you can watch here!
The assignment for the Education Futures module gave us the opportunity to create a two minute stop-motion animation. In order to do this, myself and two other class members teamed up to do a re-creation of the Hungry Caterpillar, a story by Eric Carle. The aim of our animation was to re-create the piece using claymation. Before we began, we sent him an e-mail, to ensure that he was happy for us to use his ideas in our work. We then set about making the props and background to fit our theme, using clay as our primary material. It took us approximately 2 hours to make the caterpillar and the various pieces of 'food' we would need for the story. We did find that there were a few issues with using the clay, as it dried out quite quickly, causing it to break apart when we were attempting to manipulate it for the filming of the animation. If I was to repeat this project, I would take careful consideration when choosing materials, ensuring that they are suitable for movement. After the clay models were completed, we went on to create a background set, using some cardboard, green foam and a ready-made background from the Zu3D animation pack. We hoped that with the right sound effects, the scene would resemble a leafy, countryside environment. For this project, we decided to used the Zu3D animation iPad app, and used the iPad camera to capture our shots. Once we were ready to begin the production of the animation, we all took on different roles, myself and Andrea worked on capturing a series of images to create the illusion of movement, leaving Luke to work on the narration and sound effects.
The plot of the story incorporates the idea of metamorphosis, by suggesting that once the caterpillar is full of from eating all of his food, he then transforms into a butterfly. This story is particularly useful for younger children, to get them thinking scientifically, but in a concept they can grasp. It was not until we began capturing the shots, that we realized how time consuming this project was going to be. It was particularly difficult to keep the props in the exact position we needed them to be in, in order for the end film to flow consistently. We also had difficulties with the lighting during the project, as each time we came to film, the lighting would be slightly different. Each difficulty we faced set us back, and we did find that we had to keep deleted a series of shots and re-filming to get the end piece to flow correctly. Encountering these problems has allowed us to appreciate the difficulty behind feature-length animations, and allowed us to understand how we could improve if we were to repeat the project.
After all shots had been captured, and the final film was of the required length, we focused our time on putting narration and sound with our images. To do this, we recorded Luke narrating the story, and adjusted the speed of the film to suit the sound. The problem with doing it this way, which we found later on, was that in order for the film to fit the sound, the film had to be played at a fairly slow speed, reducing its effectiveness to the audience. Alongside the narration, we added a constant 'countryside' sound effect to add to the background theme, and a number of other short sound effect clips to give the film more dimension.
I feel that, if we were to repeat this assignment, I would plan everything beforehand, and test out a few ideas to find out which one would be best. With some planning and trial-error, some of the problems we encountered may have appeared, and we could have worked towards removing them, or re-thinking an idea to avoid it. Despite this, I feel that we produced an end product of a decent standard, which reflects the time and effort we put in to creating it.
On Wednesday 21st January, our university seminar group traveled to London (at 5am!) to attend the annual British Educational Training and Technology (BETT) show. The show is made up of a range of exhibitors, most of which have developed technologies which could be used in education and further education. These included big technology companies such as Apple Inc, and Google. There were also a number of companies offering learning platforms for school systems, such as Learn pad and Frog. These are designed to offer an easy learning tool for teachers, to enable them to assess pupils progress, and to get students thinking creatively. We also noticed that there were a large number of companies offering tools to develop pupils coding skills. With these tools, pupils will be able to create their own programs and develop essential IT skills. It was surprising to see how many companies there are that work with primary/secondary and SEN schools, all offering new technologies and ideas to support learning.
As part of our assignment for our Education Futures module, we were required to create a stop-motion animation, and although we used Zu3D, it was interesting to see some of the more advanced equipment in the BETT workshops. We were also able to see the Zu3D technology being used in action, and even had the chance to ask a few questions to the team who were marketing it!
Before the trip, I was not aware of just how big the market is for educational technology, or how much technology is actually out there to be utilised by teachers and educators. It was also useful to see what technology I could possibly be working with in the future, and learn about their benefits for children. I feel that I personally have benefited from attending BETT, and would advise any future teachers/educators/entrepreneurs to attend.
Once we had spoken to various speakers and collected a number of freebies, we decided to leave the uni side of the visit behind and head to the west end to see Wicked the musical, which was equally exciting and highly recommended!!
