Category: animation

On Monday, Comenius West Midlands held its Primary Languages Conference at the Novotel in Wolverhampton. Sandwiched between keynotes by Joe Brown from CILT that involved song rhyme and lots of action, and Steven Fawkes from ALL who thrilled us with his ‘Banane‘, delegates had to choose sessions from a range including :

• It’s magic!
• International Perspective
• Let’s play – Language games and activities for the playground.
• Numeracy through Languages
• Animation
• Italian for the Primary classroom – a cross curricular approach.
• Music and songs in the Primary classroom
• Animation in the languages classroom (double session)
• Creative use of ICT

A tricky choice for many, judging from the feedback at the end of the day! I for one will be emailing presenters for notes from their sessions as I was presenting and missed out on all of the sessions!

Actually, I didn’t completely miss out as I was able to attend the plenaries and also began the day by acting as ‘roadie’ for Oscar Stringer as he presented a whistle stop double session on animation from idea through planning, modelling, filming, adding finishing touches and publishing. Phew! In a very short time (less that two hours), the participants made short films in French and Spanish which can be viewed below and on his NING network. Just shows what you can do in a short time with good instruction, imagination and a bit of plasticine. ;o)

Find more videos like this on Animation For Education

Definitely inspired me! So much so that, after a quick chat with Oscar, I decided to have a go with my Year 4 class this week. More of that in a later post!

My session was entitled Creative use of ICT and centred on the use of some tools that i thnk are useful to enhance and enable PLL.

The idea had been to introduce delegates to Voki, Voicethread, Audacity and Photostory, explain how I’ve used them in my classroom, and then let delegates have a go at using one of the tools. I’d prepared notes for people that went into everyone’s pack so those who couldn’t attend were able to benefit too, and these pointed to online tutorials for the tools as well as examples from my experience and research. I’d also requested a laptop between two to be provided with a microphone and Internet access, and Audacity and Photostory3 uploaded ready. I’d prepared a Voicethread and Voki account for the day so all outcomes could be saved together for future reference, and I’d also added some examples to get people started.

Best laid plans and all! There were three laptops provided, the speakers didn’t work, and Internet access was at best infuriatingly slow and at worst non-existent (at 20€ per laptop, I hope the orgnisers got a refund!) Anyhow, it left me rather embarrassed as my examples took an age to load (Voki) or didn’t play sound (Voicethread AND Voki at times) – next tie I’ll save them for offline access using Camtasia or similar – and I’ve found that there is a facility on Voicethread now to save for offline access.

However, I did manage to highlight the use of del.icio.us which i hadn’t intended to mention but proved to be one of the most popular ideas with delegates. My account of how I use Audacity led to lots of smiles and there was a general hum of interest as I made a Photostory in three minutes.

I must say was a little disheartened by the first session, especially as I had to repeat it after lunch, but several people came up to me and seemed to be buzzing about something I’d shared, so I went into the repeat feeling a little more confident, especially as I was prepared for the problems this time! The make up of the group was different this time and they asked lots of questions – I think they were the G&T group ;o)

At the end of the afternoon when the evaluations were returned, I was rather surprised, and very pleased as well!- to read several who said things like

If you want to have the notes, see below. and all the sites / references can be found on my del.icio.us account – http:del.icio.us/lisibo/june22

Creative uses of ICT in the PLL classroom – Get more College Essays

After a conversation with a few of us in Nottingham at the UK National eTwinning Conference yesterday, and a crash course in NING building from NING queen Jo Rhys Jones, Oscar Stringer has created a NING network called Animation for Education for those wanting to discover more about animation in education.

As Oscar explains in the site’s blurb, he aims for it to be –
A place to share ideas, thoughts and examples of work. With the aim to help you develop confidence in using animation in the classroom.

So, why not do as Isabelle Jones and SpookingDorf did after reading my tweet about it and join? You’ve got nothing to lose and lots to gain :o)

I’m currently in Nottingham at the NCSL at the British eTwinning Conference.

This morning I went to a workshop by Oscar Stringer on animation – the theory being that it will become ingrained in my brain if I do the workshop enough time ;o)

Here’s the video I made with Jo Rhys-Jones and a lovely lady called Sue based on minibeasts. Hope you enjoy it – we’re very proud.

I spent this afternoon at the aptly named Beaumanor Hall near Loughborough in the company of teachers of pupils with special needs, drawn from both special and mainstream schools. I had been asked by the British Council to present a case study on eTwinning as part of the afternoon’s proceeding led by Lorna Belsey and Tom Birtwistle, and I was happy to do so.

After a delicious lunch – my healthy first course of mackerel and salad was followed by not-so-healthy bread and butter pudding – although the bread seemed to be brown so that must be good??- we adjourned to the ICT suite where Lorna explained Comenius and the ISA awards. Then it was by go to present a case study about last year’s project at WCPS – Somos lo que celebramos – and to share some ideas of how eTwinning might work for them, and some ideas of tools that could be used.

You can access the presentation and some of the documents in a previous post, but here are some links that I mentioned that you might wish to investigate.

British Council website
eTwinning home page
eTwinning portal

Whitehouse Common Primary School website
Colegio Público César Hurtado Delicado website (etwinning section)

Voki
Voicethread

Voices of the World wiki of previous months’ activities
Euro 08 project
Animation

David S Stewart’s interview about Special Schools and eTwinning
Nick Falk and Anne Jakins’ presentation about eTwinning at Sackville School (with SEN pupils)

Wishing you all happy eTwinning! :o)

Another of today’s discoveries was a bit of a surprise.

In amongst the Spanish rhymes and songs, I came across some videos with the prefix ‘NannyMóvil’. Reading the ‘About this video’ information I discovered that educamobile is someone called Alfonso from Barcelona and makes ‘Animaciones, canciones y cuentos en los teléfonos móviles de los padres, para distraer a sus hijos pequeños.‘ (children oriented songs, animations and tales for parents’ mobile phones to distract small children.)
You can watch an interview with educamobile explaining and demonstrating the idea here – it’s in Catalan though! – I knew it was worth learning :o)
He has posted some of the videos on Youtube and they do look interesting. You can download the animations and songs etc to your mobile in Spain at a cost of 2€ +IVA (although there is a promotion at present to get ‘la granja’ free)- there’s an SMS number to contact. Doesn’t seem to work from England – I’m investigating how you might be able to download here. giving access to the menu of downloads – There’s also a wap address http://wap.nannymovil.com – can’t make it connect on my phone though :o(
So, I have another plan! Using Zamzar, I’m going to convert the videos from Youtube and then Bluetooth them to my ‘phone. Working out the format is the fun bit!

But even if that fails, the videos could be useful in class. The animations are cute and there are several types. There are the Nannyanimaciones that could be used to present vocabulary. There’s one of ‘bichos‘ (bugs) that would capture the imagination of some of the little lads (and possibly a couple of the young ladies!) I teach, and then there’s ‘animales de la sabana‘ featuring wild animals. Below is the ‘la granja‘ video.

I do think that to maintain attention you would need to selectively show the clips as they could become quite monotonous unless you play a game with them or just show a bit of the video – and the music could be a little more varied.

Then there are Nannycanciones like Que llueva and then Nannycuentos.

The cuento I found on Youtube was Caperucita Roja.
As the ‘blurb’ says –
‘Aquí mostramos a los personajes del cuento de Caperucita: el lobo, la abuelita, el cazador, y la caperucita. El cuento del móvil es mucho mejor. En este video no figuran ni los efectos especiales, ni los diálogos y algunas de las escenas que figuran en el móvil’ –
Because there is no dialogue, this would be a great inspiration/backdrop for pupils to retell the story in as simple terms as they wish – could be just naming characters for younger pupils up to older pupils (beyond primary) using more complicated language; perhaps it could be used to inspire a cross Key Stage / transition project? See what you think – I like the bold characters, especially the wolf dressed as Grandma!

You can find out more on the website – http://www.nannymovil.com
On the site you’ll also find some print and colour sheets and dice to download and make linked to videos. It’s new site so some parts are under construction – I’ve emailed about the possibility of downloading outside Spain so will keep you posted!

Having spent all weekend working hard (honest!) at the eTwinning conference in Nottingham, the last thing I fancied today was an Inset day. This was partly due to fatigue but also as I didn’t want to lose the thoughts that are still floating around my mind following the excellent CPD over the last few days. So many ideas, so little time! A further complicating factor was the need to produce evidence for our school ‘Curriculum for the 21st Century’ display that each Head had to put up for today’s proceedings. Flattered to be asked but lots of work – hence the Twittering about laminating.

Despite my misgivings, I have to say that I enjoyed today and found it quite exciting!

The theme of the day was ‘A curriculum for the 21st Century’ and the day was actually an Inset for our cluster of local schools based around the Creative Curriculum.

We started the day with a definition of creativity – ‘bringing into being something that did not exist before’ – before moving on to consider our aims for our pupils, deciding that it’s not content as much as attributes and skills that are at the heart of what we want. What really excited me was that the things being said fitted so well with what I had been hearing (and agreeing with!) in Nottingham, particularly in George Glass‘s presentation about collaborative communities, raising self esteem, nurturing empathetic youngsters who can work cooperatively in teams, becoming effective learners and local and global citizens.

The idea of working creatively was likened to building a house – the house won’t be built by leaving a pile of bricks on the plot – you need to put them all together. There was also the analogy of a tree with content as the leaves, and attributes as the roots (teamwork / reflective learners / self managers / creative participants / independent enquirers), held together by the trunk of learning experiences.

And the picture I liked best was about throwing things! If you throw a dead bird, there are laws etc that make it possible to calculate how far it will travel, but if the bird is alive, there is no way of knowing. The vision was of the creative curriculum as a way to launch live birds into the world, hoping that they will soar , becoming things of beauty rather than plummeting to the ground. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for a good analogy, but this made sense to me!

I can see that thinking creatively and given pupils more responsibility for their learning is desirable – we want children to remember things – what’s more memorable than finding out for yourself, and enjoying the process? I could have downloaded Oscar Stringer’s notes on animation and learned that way, and without the opportunity to experience the workshop, that would have taken me through the necessary steps. However, being there, hearing the instructions first hand whilst watching what to do and then working with a group of people to create and animate our own ideas was so much more memorable.
We were allowed to play around with the plasticine (and we did!) without being told off – how often do we give kids something that they’re dying to play with (as a language teacher, I’m thinking of dictionaries), only to tell them that they’ve got to do it our way? Wouldn’t it be better to let the pupils ‘play’ first and discover for themselves with guidance where necessary?

As a Primary Languages teacher, I think I’ve become increasingly creative in my teaching, looking for ways to embed the subject across the curriculum, and I believe that’s one of the reasons why I was asked to present some ideas and evidence for the display. It was good to talk to teachers from other schools about eTwinning, International School Award, Voices of the World, EDL, links with Canada and USA as well as Spanish from 3-11, and to share some ideas that they could use in their schools. And, in the end, it wasn’t too onerous to miss lunch and stand by our display talking to colleagues, because I wholeheartedly believe that being creative is the way to go.

Just rushed out of Oscar Stringer’s workshop to upload our finished animation (it is coffee time so I’m not being rude!)

The idea of our animation was as a promotional video short for the Voices of the World NING group that Sharon began following a previous eTwinning conference, hence the multilingual big mouths.

This was made by Sharon (Scotland), Elissa (UK via Australia), Kurt (Germany), Nikolay (Bulgaria) and me (UK / Spain) in about an hour and a half (although we fiddled and tweaked for longer!) and I can see it as something that I could now use within my practice. We talked about how we might use this kind of animation in our classrooms, specifically in the context of eTwinning, and suggested that an animation could be started in one country, sent to a partner school for music and sound to be added and perhaps sent on for subtitles, credits etc, thus making it a collaborative project. That’s a really exciting idea that I may well be pursuing so watch this space!!

I’m blogging from the Internet hub at the NCSL in Nottingham as I’m attending an etwinning conference this weekend. For those who have never had the pleasure, it’s a lovely place – Molten Brown toiletries, a maid to make your bed, complimentary drinks and delicious three course meals.

I’ve met lots of interesting people from across Europe; England, Scotland, Wales, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, Sweden, Finland etc. After a drinks reception on Friday with people bringing items of food and drink that represent their countries, there was a conference dinner and then today we’ve got down to the ‘work’.

I’ve been involved in eTwinning for the last year or so, completing a project called Somos lo que celebramos at Whitehouse Common with Colegio Público César Hurtado Delicado. I spoke about this project at Joe Dale’s conference a couple of weeks ago (see my blog post on Talkabout Primary MFL) and was sent to this conference to represent Comenius West Midlands, the idea being that I would find out further information about eTwinning links across regions and countries, and also make new friends and potential contacts for future projects.

There have been sessions about the eTwinning portal and ICT and eTwinning. the main part of the day has been spent in one of three workshops taking an ICT theme and showing how it could be used for eTwinning. I’ve been attending the Animation for Education session lead by Oscar Stringer. In my next post, I’ll share the outcomes of the sessions in which I worked with four other delegates and some plasticine to make a short film.

eTwinning is a great way to address the Intercultural understanding strand of the KS2 Framework, and is also a great source of cross curricular activities, as the project between WCPS and CPCHD showed. But more of that tomorrow – the clocks do change tonight but it’s still tiring work being at a conference 😉