Specialist Crafts Animation Workshops

Ive recently been involved in delivering taster animation workshops to secondary teachers from Art and ICT departments. Many of these teachers have never attempted stop-motion animation with their students.

Its amazing what can be achieved with good, intuitive software in just 2 hours. With a little more time to focus on sound, these projects would be brilliant!

London Group A 

London Group B

Newcastle 7Stories

If you would like to find out more about stop-motion animation and how to get started in your school then check out the Specialist Crafts website for more information about their creative courses they run across the UK throughout the year.

It's an inexpensive way to get you trained up and you come away with a £75 voucher to spend on resources in your school! - exceptional value for money.

You can view recent projects here on YouTube and maybe share them with your class to give you some ideas. I also have a blog page devoted to animation with links to additional resources here.

Follow Specialist Crafts on twitter to find out more: @SpecCrafts

Make your own talking books with a QR Code

Image Karen Gruener

This is a great idea for primary schools, and what a motivator to get children to read! Thanks to karen Gruener for the idea and the SnapGuide she created.

More details here on SnapGuide:

1. Log into a google or Youtube account before you begin.

2. Use the iPad video camera to record the child reading the full story. If you dont want the child to be seen you can cover the camera up.

3. Go to photo gallery/ photos on the iPad and locate the recording.

4. In the top right corner click the arrow jumping out of the box – export option and choose Youtube.

5. In Youtube add a title, description, tags & click unlisted – click publish.

6. Log in to your Youtube account – locate your upload, click info and settings – grab the URL – highlight and save the URL.

7. Create a QR code – you will need a QR code generator to do this. There are lots available online – do a google search for one - Red Laser is great for this, easy to use and free. To generate a code, paste the URL of the Youtube video into the relevant box and click generate.

8. Copy and paste the QR code ready for you to print it – its a good idea to add the child’s name underneath it.

9. Print – Cut out and tape the QR code to the front cover of the book.
10. Use a QR scan app to scan the code on the front cover of the book and listen to the story.

Sharing class books created in IBA

For those teachers wondering how they can share an iBooks Author project with their
class this is a simple solution.

Lets say that a student has created a book but you don't want to publish it to the iBooks store. However, you do want to make this book available to other students - to download, share and read it.  

1. Export the book as an iBook from the Share menu in iBooks Author and the finished book will have the .ibook file extension. 
2. Next, upload this copy to Dropbox and share the link with your students.  
3. Place the file into the Public folder in Dropbox, this takes less clicks to download. 
4. Finally, students need to visit the Dropbox site in Safari on their iPads and click the option to open the file in iBooks.
5. All students now have access to the finished book and can read it in iBooks on their own iPad.

Snapguide - create & share How to's

Anyone involved in Education and training will love this free app. Its simple but oh so effective. Students (and adults) of all ages can choose to create a guide about something or learn how to do something by reading somebody else's step-by-step how to guide.

Finding the category of guides you are interested in is simple too - simply filter by Topic. 

Download from the App store here

Perfect for explaining science experiments, maths concepts, writing instructions. Learn how to create, build, make or draw something or use a particular technique. With built in photo-editing features you can now rotate and enhance images as you write your guide. 
Snapguide is also available as Web2.0 software and works on a computer as well as an iPad. Students can choose to create a guide from their PC, Mac, iPhone or iPad and learning can take place anywhere, anytime from a mobile device. Brilliant for assessment opportunities and revision.

Check out How to Grow Cress by Barbara Ainscough on Snapguide.

Example iPad policies

If you're working in a school or college environment and using mobile devices like iPads, then inevitably you will be expected to have a policy on various aspects of iPad use.

Many thanks to Simon Elliott @simon_elliott at Mounts Bay Academy for sharing these policies and other pdfs such as essential apps and lesson plans.

Simon Elliott is happy for anyone to use the documents as long as credit is given to Mounts Bay Academy and Simon's website thefreemac.com.

Courtesy of Mounts Bay Academy

Scratch programming - Red Nose Day

Hope that you get your school involved! Why not get your students and colleagues creating Scratch based Red Nose Day games? To support Red Nose Day Get students programming in Scratch  Have Fun! Volunteer University Students and school students have started to add resources and links on www.scratchyournose.com please register to offer your support and get updates. Students at Highfields School, Wolverhampton, supported by Inspire will be live streaming out support activities during the day, schedule tbc.  Why not download a poster from here, print it out and put it up in your school. How many students can you get programming this week? Andrew Goff Director of Education Proud supporters of scratchyournose.com In support of Comic Relief,  registered charity 326568 (England/Wales); SC039730 (Scotland)

Padagogy Wheel

Thanks to Allan Carrington - University of Adelaide for this idea. 

I find the wheel really useful and the process of Analyse - Evaluate - Create - Understand - Apply - is already very familiar to the teachers I work with.  

More information about this wheel, including a link to the app wheel with hyperlinks to each of the apps in the iTunes store can be found here.

Allan put this wheel together several years ago so you may not agree with his app choices but thats no problem! Simply substitute your own favourite apps into the wheel to create your own bespoke pedagogy for your school.

Click on the image and zoom to increase the size.