GoAnimate is a website allowing users to create animation videos online. Essentially, GoAnimate is a cartoon creation software. GoAnimate has a free version in which the basic user can create an unlimited number of animations; however, these animations are restricted to 2 minutes in length and the inability to upload images or flash files. The paid version requires a subscription fee, but allows users to have unlimited time length in animations, and the ability to upload images and export to YouTube. GoAnimate is available online at http://goanimate.com/
GoAnimate4Schools is the educational version of GoAnimate. The educational version has a private and controlled environment for classrooms, easy-to-use animation tools, unlimited choice of characters, and social networking features. This version of GoAnimate is fairly comparable to the free non-educational version. However, the educational version, which is supposedly free, allows the teacher to create 100 student accounts and provide students with access to the teacher-created animations. GoAnimate4Schools is available online at http://goanimate4schools.com/Literacy and Technology?
For the most part, GoAnimate would be considered a post-reading activity type, which assesses students’ interpretation and comprehension of the text that was read. While GoAnimate would be considered primarily under the "Creating Projects/Artifacts" activity type, it could also be useful for "Summarizing," "Retelling," and "Visualizing" activity types. Through GoAnimate, teachers could bring together technology, pedagogy, and content by having students illustrate their interpretation and understanding of a text through an interactive and user-friendly technology.
When I student taught Romeo & Juliet to freshmen ESL students, I provided students with a variety of options for a technology project. One of the options involved re-creating a scene from Romeo & Juliet. Students had to understand the scene they were re-creating well enough to illustrate the actions of the characters in the scene. This technology project helped students think more deeply into the text of their particular self-selected scene, and ultimately provided some wonderful final projects.
Students could also create their own stories using new vocabulary. For example, in a foreign language class, students could create original stories using new vocabulary from each chapter. A great example of this type of learning assignment is from a Spanish class. A student created a story about a robbery, which was stopped by Batman and Robin, using a chapter's new vocabulary (Tayjay3, 2011). Student Spanish Video
GoAnimate has a resource page providing educators with sample animations, lesson ideas, and more, separated up by subject area. This is available at: Lesson Gallery (GoAnimate, 2011).
iLearn Technology provides a multitude of ideas for using GoAnimate in the classroom, including creating "an impressive alternative book report by creating an animated book talk, interviewing a character from the story, or re-creating an important scene in the story" (iLearnTechnology, 2010). This is available at: iLearn Technology: GoAnimate
References
GoAnimate. (2011). Lesson gallery. Retrieved from http://goanimate4schools.com/public_animationsiLearnTechnology. (2010). Go animate 4 schools. Retrieved from http://ilearntechnology.com/?tag=movie
Tayjay3. (2011, October 25). Spanish 97. Retrieved from http://goanimate.com/movie/0aLY_6I4zQUM?utm_source=emailshare&uid=
This is awesome! I'm even interested! I can see an entire class with their eyes on the presentation with this program. Even allowing them to create their presentations and making them all different and creative is neat! With all the gamers, and comic-book readers that I've come across this would interest them. I like that it can be used as a project creation, and the students could work individually or as a group. Comprehension is such a hard thing to access sometimes, and to access it in a fun creative way may bring out a students strengths.
ReplyDeleteThat is so cool. I think it would be very interesting to use it in teaching. Students make their own stories and make them become real. It is another challenge for students to make a project like this, and I believe that they would like it very much.
ReplyDeleteNice Web 2.0 tool to share. I have not used it yet, so I wonder how user-friendly it is? I really like how you connected your ideas back to the TPACK activity types - thank you! Excellent ideas shared!
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