Two weeks ago I was approached by a very enthusiastic english teacher who wanted to introduce iPads in her grade 6 lesson. The department had just written up a Mythology unit for the new MYP curriculum and one of the tasks was for students to create their own animated Myth video. The students would use their iPad to investigate several different myths and legends from different cultures. Once they understood the idea of a myth they would then have to create their own.
On discussions with the teacher the hardest part was finding an app that would be easy to use but have the features to draw and animate the outcome. Finally after going back and forth we decided to go with the app Animation desk Lite. The app was easy to use but more so gave us the flexibility to take a picture from the camera or an existing one from photos. The app also allowed us to export the final project by email or save it to our camera roll.
The students were working in groups of two and once they decided what myth they were going to create, they had to do hand drawn designs showing the various stages of their story. When we demonstrated the app to the students we were amazed at how quickly they picked it up and started coming up with even more ideas on what to add to their myth.
We selected two groups of students who were working at a much faster pace and who understood how to use the app to demonstrate to the class their ideas and what they created so far on the app. For me having students explain to their peers how to use an app is very powerful, breaks barriers and encourages collaboration.
By the end of the week students had completed their hand drawn designs and their animation based on their myth idea. Their next stage was to export their animation and pictures of their hand drawn designs into iMovie and do a voiceover explaining their myth. Some of the students even added some background music.
At the end of the assignment it was brilliant to see the range of different ideas and the effort the students had put in without cutting any corners. The other impressive feature was using a range of apps to produce their final piece of work such as Animation desk lite, iMovie, uploading their work to Google drive and sharing it with their teacher.
I believe the next stage for the english department would be to display the students animations showing their various ideas on this topic through QR codes to parents, students and most importantly to existing teachers in the school. As teachers we are not very good at showing off the excellent work of our students but hopefully this is the start of something and will take off in the school. View one of the animations through the QR code below.
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