Volcanoes, computers, animations - Authentic Context

One of my schools are studying Volcanoes at the moment, and as we live in the city of Volcanoes (Auckland), this was a great opportunity to link our learning to an authentic context.

ICT component: View this slideshow, click on the links and follow the instructions on the slide.
Work through the PowerPoint file 'Making a Volcano'

• watch the animation on how a volcano erupts
• Look at the Shake, Rattle and Roll site, take notes on what the animations look like
• Look at the animations on Weather Whizz kids and take notes
• Look at the different types of Volcanoes on Volcano Explorer, build your own virtual Volcano and see how it erupts
Volcanic Simulations
View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.

Follow the animation steps in the Animating objects PowerPoint and practice making an animation.

How to animate objects in power point

View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.

Once all of the students have made the animation, share them with the class and talk about if the animations are in the right order. Revisit Volcano Explorer and look at all of the different volcanoes and identify the different ways the volcanoes erupt.
Ask the students can they identify what type of volcano they have, and if the order of eruption correct. If not then they can work on their volcanoes to  make the necessary adjustments.

Further Activities:

• Select one of the Volcanoes in Auckland, take a photo or find a photo, crop it, identify what type of volcano it is and create a volcanic eruption simulation
• create a volcanic simulation of your local volcano, upload to Slideboom, embed in a Glogster poster explaining the type of volcano it is 
• Read 'Under the Mountain' by Maurice Gee (a fantasy fiction based some of the volcanoes in Auckland) Create a map showing the positions and type of volcano,  create a simulation for the 3 different volcanoes

Animation and Digital Cameras

I worked with a group of children and a teacher today showing them how they can make a simple animation. They are studying Maori Culture and Protocols on a Marae. Their focus is on Karanga (Welcoming onto the Marae), Hongi (greeting) and Wero (the challenge). The teacher would like them to show their understandings of these protocols by creating animations, so the class is divided into 3 groups each going to depict the 3 different foci.

Team Members
Each group needs to have a
- camera person
- tripod holder
- set designer
- several people in charge of animating and moving the characters

Planning
- research, gather information
- storyboard
- write script
- collect animation objects and set material
- animate using cameras
- edit adding text and music
- publish as movie, DVD or slideshow

Set Design
It is important to have an inanimate object like a tree or a building so that it really looks like the characters are moving. I have suggested coloured fabric for ground cover and sky. Students will also collect small rocks, sticks and stones.

Characters
We discussed what the characters could be made our of and these are some of the choices
- plasticine
- pipe cleaners and pegs
- small dolls
- Lego

Filming
- the tripod needs to be steady and all bolts and handles screwed securely
- the camera needs to be securely set into the 'foot' of the tripod
- one person operates the camera, one person holds the tripod
- one person animates their own characters
- the photos must be 'framed' within the Set (we don't want to see what is behind or above the set)
- all characters need to be firmly secured with blu-tak so they don't move

Editing
- download all photos to iPhoto or My Pictures, put them in a folder so that they are easy to find
- upload photos to iMovie or MovieMaker
- before dragging the first photo down to the movie tray, set the speed (0.01) and in iMovie (turn of Ken Burns)
- drag rest of photos down to the Movie tray (Ctrl - A for Win, Command-A for Mac)
- if the photos are not the right speed then highlight them all as above and adjust the timing
- add a Title slide at the beginning, then a credits at the end
- finally add music, crop if necessary
- save Movie file and then export to your computer and/or to a blog or a wiki

PowerPoint, Visual Dioramas, Screen Beans and Animation

I was with a teacher yesterday who had been working with children on my 'Visual Diorama' idea. Some of her kids had discovered 'Screen Beans' and had been adding them to their Dioramas. She wanted to know how to make a slideshow of all of her class dioramas. Once I showed her that I suggested she might like to try a simple animation using the Screen Beans and the Backgrounds in PowerPoint.

Step One
Search for a suitable background in PowerPoint by clicking on Insert - Clipart. Type in the search term background. Click on a background to select it. Resize it to fit the slide.
Step Two
Type in the search term 'Screen Beans' in the Clipart search box. Click on the screen beans of your choice. Place them on the first slide.
Step Three
Click on the slide in the slide preview panel, press Ctrl D (Command D for Apple) to duplicate the slide. Move the screen beans by clicking on one, then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move them one or two spaces. Duplicate that slide. Repeat until you have finished your animation
Step Four
Go to Slide Transition and deselect on Mouse Click and click on Automatically After and leave the timing at 00.00
Press F5 or click View Show to play your animation.
For it to work really well, you will need a lot of slides. For five seconds of animation I created 46 slides.
This activity is great fun, very quick to do and a great introduction into the world of animation!