On Monday, February 9, 2015, a group of 3rd graders and their College Mentors visited the iStudio to learn about stop motion animation. Using iPads and different manipulatives, students created live action videos of everything from a rhino charging a pyramid to Goofy breaking it down on a celestial dance-floor.
The day’s goal was to both introduce students to new technologies and demonstrate the geometric properties of shapes. To create their videos, students used spheres, pyramids, boxes, and other 3-D figures in the composition of their short movies. Students collaborated together with their peers and mentors at all stages of development in the creation of their stop motion animated movies and, as they finished, the movies were projected onto a Promethean board for all to enjoy.
The most advanced skill for the students to apprehend in the lesson was the use of time to effect changes in the perceived visual field. At first, students were unclear about the nature of the medium at hand–the interaction of space and time. But after some tinkering, some very entertaining videos were produced ending with a video of all the day’s participants filing into a picture one-by-one.
Mentors oversee the creation of an Arctic scene. Picture by Joseph Hurtgen.
