Teacher videos are terrific learning tools, but student-created videos are even richer. Creating videos, motion graphics, and animations nudge students to blend a host of proficiencies. It involves visual design using colors and templates, just as it requires language skills of narration and storytelling.
The process of using a storyboard to stitch together a narrative enables students to combine logical reasoning, cause-and-effect, and content mastery. These compelling presentations provide opportunities for students to learn, share, and teach others. It reinforces the graphicacy skills they need to learn, design, and communicate a message as journalists.
Kids teaching kids is the purest model of learning where they become the educators of
their peers. The examples below are just some the different types of videos, motion graphics, and animations made by our students.
Explainer videos use clean graphics and voiceover narrations to teach viewers about a particular subject. They often include clever icons and whiteboard-style backgrounds. They once were produced exclusively by high-end design studios, since complex software and marketing professionals were required to create dynamic motion graphics. Now, thanks to the extremely intuitive interface of MySimpleShow, any layperson — or student — can combine text, images, and voice to yield an extremely effective animated movie.
Explainer videos are pitch-perfectly suited for student projects, because they hit all the sweet spots of higher-ordered thinking and layered proficiencies. They require storyboarding to map out each clip. They demand a smooth script to educate the audience. They also benefit from logical reasoning in transitioning clearly from screen to screen. Finally, they rely on the core tenets of graphicacy, in picking symbols to represent crisp visual meanings and metaphors.
MySimpleShow (@mysimpleshow) makes the design and publication of these videos enormously easy. For students and teachers, they offer pre-made templates to guide the text and the progression. The intelligence of the video creator automatically searches and provides pictures to correspond to the nouns in the script. And the superb narrative options allow users either to upload their own voices or to select from two automated personas. For our middle schoolers, who are often nervous about recording their own voices, the choice of a “robot” narrator was a blessing in and of itself.
Although the team at MySimpleShow has apparently been producing videos for years for corporate clients, this new consumer version seems to have benefited from high-quality feedback in providing a welcoming and successful tool. Without overstating it, the account creation, built-in tutorials, interface understanding, text-to-speech rendering, icon menus, upload options, and download ease are among all the best in the #edtech world. Our kids quickly figured out how to create their own videos (even though their teacher did watch the step-by-step tutorial).
The student project featured in this post centered on inventions of the late 1800s. During their history class unit about the Gilded Age, each eighth-grader researched a new technology and animated it thanks to the range of graphics and transitions within MySimpleShow. They then easily uploaded their class creations to YouTube, to share via Twitter and in digital portfolios.
The students also immediately began to realize other fun ways to use MySimpleShow — in their other academic subjects, when they had a choice of visual projects, and in their family lives, for birthdays and social media channels. This tool is a valuable addition to the suite of video creators that help bring kids’ ideas to visual life.
In the aftermath of one of the most divisive elections in
our history, and in light of the possible presidential immigration ban barring
people from entering the United States, we’re left with trying to explain to
our learners what it all means. Their study of human rights along with a
diverse classroom population adds further importance to our role as educators
in a global world.
Learners need to know that refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants fall under the category of immigration, but there is a difference. They need to understand the enormity of the refugee crisis. This includes not only
where they come from but also who makes up the majority of the refugee population.
The following resources proved invaluable in helping our
students put the refugee crisis in perspective. It helped them realize the massive humanitarian needs refugees face around the
world.
This animation from TED Education helps students understand what the term refugee means and how it is different from asylum seeker and migrant. The video provides the perfect introduction to the topic and can easily be used with elementary students.
This is the story of how the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) was established to help those whose lives were uprooted by conflict or natural disaster. The video explains the historic role of the UNHCR from 1950 to the present.
The interactive map plots the migration of refugees around the world along a timeline that begins in the year 1975. The project uses United Nations data to tell the story of the millions of registered refugees under UN protection. The circles around each country adjust in size to show the flow of refugees as they expand and contract from a particular location. The lines that branch out indicate where the refugees sought asylum.
With the number of displaced people reaching the highest levels since post World War II, these maps and charts provide students with a visual look at the statistical information regarding the spike in the number of refugees around the globe.
Historically, the United States has never shut
the door on refugees; yet, the political rhetoric and misinformation over
the last several weeks regarding the immigration ban has confused some of our learners. This video
from the The International Rescue Committee seeks to present the real
facts about refugees seeking asylum in the United States and the vetting
process.
The magnitude of the current global refugee crisis is highlighted in this UNHCR video. The forced displacement rose significantly in 2015, and it is the first time in history that the number of displaced persons surpassed 60 million. We believe students need to recognize this crisis beyond media blasts to ban immigration; this is about real people, and sadly many of them are the same ages as those we teach.
One of the projects our students complete each year is the study of immigration from the early nineteenth
century to modern day. They learn
that people leave their homelands because of political, economic, and social
reasons. It’s not unusual for a student to discover or report on how their own ancestors were forced to flee their homelands.
They, too, were refugees.
It seems a fitting close to the year to think about humanity. As a nation about to embark on a new era in governmental politics, the likes of which we have not seen, it is important to take a moment and reflect on change and how it affects all of us. We’ve used the video called the History Of The World In Seven Minutes for years with our students to demonstrate not only how improvements in technology changed the course of civilizations but also how progress moved at an exponential speed as it advanced.
Every December 31, we celebrate the start of a new year, and we generally think in terms of the last 2016 years. But what if we rethink when the human era began? The video animation from In a Nutshell, entitled A New History For Humanity - The Human Era, does just that by marking the history of the human era according to the Holocene calendar. It could change the way we think about history; we would not be forgetting 10,000 years of human progress. A year zero could apply to all humanity and all cultures.
So as we approach the year 12, 017 HE, let us kick off a new year by building peacemakers and peacekeepers for all of humanity.
Creating videos and motion graphics nudges both students and teachers to blend a host of proficiencies. It involves visual design in colors and templates, just as it requires language skills of narration and storytelling. It supports key technological skills in manipulating online media, and it reinforces the importance of publishing in sharing child creations with peers and parents. Kids teaching kids is the purest model of learning. It is the model of the student-centered classroom, because they become the educators of their peers.
Video production allows students to stitch together a narrative and storyboard each moment in the process that combines logical reasoning, cause-and-effect, and content mastery. They also must employ their graphicacy skills to fashion compelling and appealing visual displays. These quick-cut movies and short animations combine icons and text to communicate a message. Explainer videos, for example, are perfect for the classroom. They blend voice, image, and language into compelling presentations for students to learn. Content created using app editors or motion graphics provides a way for the brain to receive information through both the eyes and ears. Learning tools that can tap into both modalities have greater effectiveness in fostering understanding. They add layers of meaning for nuanced, standards-based education.
It is important to employ interactive ways to engage and share student work that builds alternative ways for students to design content, collect feedback, and reflect on the creative process. This requires using resources that engage learners in the classroom much the way they are outside of it. The gradual spread of technology tasks is invariably shifting classroom education toward a more student-directed model. As we move more and more into the blended, flipped, and social world of learning, we need to encourage creative interactions and self-directed investigations with the knowledge that our students can be active participants in the education process.
As our nation’s children head to back to the classroom, many schools find themselves trying to rein in kids’ summer impulses. Strict conduct policies are emphasizing rules and enforcing straight lines on students who are used to gamboling in backyards and lolling for hours.
Many Scandinavian countries, most brain science, and all veteran teachers would encourage the exact opposite. They would argue that instead of limiting play, educators should expand the amount of free time dedicated to socialization and creativity. Imagination itself is not learned, but it can be unlearned due to the drone of worksheets and mandates.
Source: ASIDE 2016
While many schools nationwide are reducing free play opportunities, our neighboring Patchogue-Medford district here on Long Island has actually doubled recess time from 20 to 40 minutes. In fact, a few Texas and Oklahoma schools now schedule recess four times a day. These changes are not capricious; they are part of studies such as the LiiNK Project, which has found that physical activity increases students' emotional well-being and reduces instances of bullying and stress. The American Academy of Pediatrics supports these findings with its seminal white paper about "The Crucial Role Of Recess In School."
Across the board, students, teachers, parents, administrators, kinesiologists, therapists, and test graders are all witnessing the positive outcomes of enhanced play time. The scientist Jaak Panksepp has devoted a career of research to answering two pivotal questions: Where in the brain does play come from? And is it a learned activity, or is it a basic function?
Source: ASIDE 2016
NPR has highlighted Panksepp’s studies, showcasing that play is deep and instinctive, shared across mammals, and integral to survival. Important social skills stem from play, in testing interactions, probing limits, and navigating hierarchies. In other words, play is primitive, the natural outcome of time and trust.
Children need this unstructured time to make mistakes and develop friendships on their own terms. The arena of the soccer field or the sand box is ideal in nurturing successful adults. Recess is not a privilege. It should not be an afterthought. It should instead be written into the students’ Bill Of Rights.
Otherwise, what are our playgrounds? Are they monuments to eras past? Are they the still testaments to the naivety of earlier generations? Are they just another hallmark of the sped-up modern day, the never-enough-time-for day, when the things we wish for are just that — wishes?
For other ideas about the importance of play, we recommend:
Educators have always sought to add visual interest to their lessons, to support learning modalities and to provide illustrative examples of the topics under consideration. From postcards to prints, from filmstrips to YouTube, the power of pictures and movies to aid learning is undeniable. Now, various digital tools and editing applications are enlivening "flat" images in thrilling fashion. The animation of historical photos is bringing primary sources to life in ways unimagined by teachers and students a decade ago.
Often called 2.5D, or "the Parallax Effect," the rendering of motion within a still photograph allows the eye to traverse the image in a more fully realized manner. The forced examination of details, as foregrounds and backgrounds snap into focus, invites viewers to explore the entire depth of field. In adding movement to static characters, the past becomes relevant as observers imagine the seconds preceding and succeeding the camera's shutter. A crescendo of action added to a familiar scene places the spectator within the historical moment. Each detail now becomes tangible and palpable. Each setting contains nuance and fluidity.
Even more interesting for educators to consider are the ways these adaptations of primary sources reinforce the critical questions about dealing with pictorial artifacts: What role does the photographer or editor play in staging a photo? What is intentionally included, removed, or modified within a scene? Is any artificial capture of a moment truly "real," and how much scholarly skepticism should students lend to every research source?
Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Audition are some of the most common tools to render photographs and paintings from 2D to 3D. The History Channel (and several truck commercials) use these effects regularly in their productions. Some excellent tutorials exist (where else?) on YouTube to practice creating these styles of videos (here and here).
At their most advanced, these animations ask us to reconsider the historical and the artistic record as changeless constants. At their most basic, however, these videos are just neat. They are inviting and clever. They lure in students and others to enjoy the study of history even more.
For other ideas about creating animations, check out:
Visual Literacy - The essential premise of the game is to interpret a virtual world. Users must recognize symbols and signifiers, which are the building blocks of visual literacy. Students must decode the augmented reality (AR) by "reading" images and internalizing pictorial stimuli. This fundamental skill is known as graphicacy.
STEM & Big Data - Educators have been wrestling with the world of Big Data for years. Here, the foundation resides in math and numbers; how much combat power does each creature have, how much candy and/or stardust is on hand, and how long until an incubation period ends?
Collaborative Learning - The app offers a mild distraction for a single user, but the expanded components come alive when a player engages with other combatants. In face-offs and in personal conversations at community sites, the game subtly draws students into cooperative play.
Social Media In The Classroom - This app furthers the benefits of social media in learning. It encourages the emerging discipline of the Digital Humanities, as it also promotes crowdsourcing, sharing, teaming, and student avatars.
Students are always the first to want to care for Mother Earth. At our school’s Earth Day planting event on Friday, the kids asked why we didn’t do this more often — why we didn’t tend the gardens and grow vegetables and think about composting, recycling, and conservation on a more consistent basis.
The ensuing discussion led to questions about water. Each day seems to bring new headlines about the crisis in Flint or California, not to mention the global droughts that affect millions of people. Few people realize that only 2.5 percent of all the water on earth is fresh water. And two-thirds of that fresh water is locked in glaciers and ice caps, leaving only 1 percent to sustain the 7 billion inhabitants.
Think of the inordinate amount of water we use every day through drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning, producing food, making products, and generating electricity. It takes 2400 liters of water just to make one hamburger.
A terrifically produced explainer video from Kasra Design, called "Precious Water - Animation Awareness," brings these startling facts to life through a kid-friendly cartoon. The motion graphic, seemingly made for the Iranian Butane Industrial Group, offers 10 ways each of us can make a difference in conservation. These kind of tips resonate with students, because they require little sacrifice but offer a big reward.
Aside from the obvious advice of not running water while brushing teeth or not letting toilet leaks last too long, there are some clever ideas. For example, if we reduce our shower times by just 60 seconds, we can save 570 liters of water a month.
We’ve all had students in our classes over the years who sat in the back to put their heads down to sleep. This is not the student we’ve referred to as the “understudent,” who waits in the wings or quietly sits in the shadows of the room doing the required work. We’re not talking about the quiet ones, the introverts, or the “low verbals” either. The “sleeper” is different.
We recently showed a group of students preparing public service announcements one of our favorite videos called the "Vision of Students Today," produced in 2007 by Michael Wesch, for its effective way to deliver a powerful message. That’s when we discovered his recent animated video titled “The Sleeper.”
The message hit home. We’re positive that educators experienced the same frustration as the teacher in the animation, and perhaps even thought that the sleeper deliberately set out to annoy us. Some may have wondered if the student disengaged because of boredom, or questioned whether it was the material or their teaching style. For others, it’s personal and exasperating.
Why are sleepers so unsettling? Are they not paying attention, or are we? How sensitive are we to students who disengage?
This becomes our challenge!
We should not be so quick to judge, or make assumptions about why they're tired. If we never stop to ask, we may never know the hidden talents that push students to stay up late to create something they are passionate about through sheer desire.
In an education system too focused on narrow pursuits, it misses the strengths, the interests, and the opportunities for not only the sleeper, but also for every other student as well.
Kinetic typography and motion graphics are bringing to life the soaring oratory of the Civil Rights Era like never before. During the 1950s and 60s, many landmark speeches stood out in their power to persuade the conscience of a generation. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in particular, crafted brilliant language to inspire a burgeoning movement and to convince an at-time reluctant populace. During February’s African American History Month, the words of Dr. King are widely studied. Yet rarely before has the rhetoric of his writings emerged in such vivid portrayal as in the motion graphics below.
Kinetic typography is the combination of motion and text. Via animation, fonts take on lives of their own, scaffolding or cascading across canvases with the addition of music and/or narration. The zoom of calligraphy and the staccato of letters become at once mesmerizing and educational.
Dr. King’s addresses, when read quietly for homework, do feature his eloquent use of classical references and repetition. In silence, however, they do not achieve their most compelling effect. Like Shakespeare, his verses are meant to be heard, to be experienced, to be savored.
When Dr. King’s words appear in the dynamic interplay of typefaces on the screen, the music and color and locomotion all elevate his passages to new heights. They take on an urgency, a potency of expressiveness, and a linguistic might. They crystalize the commitment of the freedom fighters pushing for fair housing, fair employment, fair public service. They honor the ardor of those who sacrificed much for so many.
The three videos in this post contain engrossing representations of Dr. King’s most moving rhetoric. In each case, he builds phrases and arguments in a powerful crescendo about human dignity and natural rights. His “I Have A Dream” speech may be his most famous, yet his final speech, “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop,” and his final sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct,” may together feature his most masterful craftsmanship with verbiage and values, rights and reason. By adding motion, the designers of these videos bring Dr. King’s messages to life.
After months of polls, predictions, and prognostications, the citizens of Iowa will finally render the first actual votes of the 2016 presidential campaign. The process, though, is far from simple. The Iowa caucuses are notoriously obtuse affairs, especially on the Democratic side. The details of the caucuses may be familiar to Iowans and political science junkies, but the precise steps in selecting delegates are enormously important for all citizens to know. Students especially should be aware of how a caucus works, because it is a true instance of civics-in-action and because one of the candidates will go on to become the next leader of the free world.
The explainer videos featured below are all terrific tools in teaching students about the first-in-the-nation voting process. As animated motion graphics, they can effectively reach learners of all ages. They would be ideal for both in-class or flipped learning, as they outline the history and the methodology behind Iowa's quirky tradition of caucus-going.
How A Caucus Works, Explained With Lego - by Mic
What Is A Caucus? - by MSNBC
How The Iowa Democratic Caucus Works, Featuring Legos - by VPR
How The Iowa Caucus Works - by Vox
So What's A Caucus, Anyway? - by AJ+
Iowa Caucuses Explained - by ABC News
Why Does Iowa Go First?! History Of The Iowa Caucus Explained 2016 - by Political News Junkie
Primary Elections Explained - by CGP Grey
For more posts about the 2016 election, check out:
Finding the optimum study technique is the holy grail for educators. Parents and teachers alike are joined in their quest to discover the most effective yet the most efficient process for helping their children learn. Countless conversations in the weekly parent-teacher Twitter chat (#ptchat), one of our favorites, have been dedicated to pinpointing the ideal strategies for evening study.
Several peer-reviewed scientific studies have actually conducted real-world experiments to determine which methods are the most successful. The terrific explainer video, "How to study smarter, not harder," offers some surprising findings about what helps children retain information. This animated infographic comes from Benedict Carey's book, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens (Random House, 2015). An award-winning science reporter, Carey explains the benefits of daydreaming and distraction to amplify learning – both of which are anathema to the conventional thinking about nighttime study.
Carey clarifies that the brain is not a muscle. It doesn’t grow simply from hard work. Most educational theorists state that the more studying, the better – the more hours of focus, the deeper the memorization. Brain-based research, though, says the opposite. Consistency is often the enemy of learning. In fact, a control-based study proved that a simple change in venue can yield a measurable increase in the internalization of material.
Parents and teachers owe it to their children to take advantage of scientific findings to aid young people's development. If proven data points to more salient learning techniques, then the skill-and-drill mentality of flashcard homework deserves to be shuttered.
For more ideas about effective learning, check out:
It may seem counterintuitive, but homework doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. For all the well-intentioned noise, the Great Homework Debate is still one of the least publicized (and most internalized) consternations for today's students and families.
Yes, there is a deep Lexus Nexus catalogue of articles about the pros and cons of homework in American education. And yes, Alfie Kohn has a quotable list of jeremiads against the ills of busy-work. But the real tug-of-war takes place at dinner tables each night, when school children have not yet completed their hours of worksheets.
This same push-and-pull continues in faculty meetings where educators wrestle with “how much is too much.” The rebranding of homework as “flipping the classroom” has only muddied the waters. Now instead of reading 20 pages of the textbook, kids watch 20 minutes of instructional videos. At bedtime, though, the question still lingers: where do authentic practice and independent learning meet redundant worksheets and desultory assignments?
Many institutions that have investigated the homework issue report increased learning when nightly burdens are lessened. Especially when it comes to ”studying,” the shifting of emphasis away from teacher-prescribed tasks to student-initiated review makes a world of difference in mastery and understanding.
We’ve offered ideas before about ways to teach without worksheets. This concept can hopefully apply to homework, too. Some terrific ideas come from this Jo Townsend “60 Minutes” video from Australia. It addresses the decline in time spent with friends and hobbies. It also mentions that 71 percent of parents feel they aren’t spending enough quality time with their children. They are instead worrying with homework and running the household. The video ends by referencing Finland, where students have no homework at all, and which consistently outranks other nations in its literacy achievements.
2015 was a banner year for animations to engage students. These dynamic explainer videos proved definitively that print textbooks cannot keep up with educational, up-to-date motion graphics, especially in the sciences.
The sphere of subjects that fall into STEM's orbit keeps expanding. For better or for worse, K-12 courses are now binarly split into either "STEM" or "Humanities" categories. We would argue that this bifurcation is harmful, erasing the natural overlaps between the sciences and the liberal arts.
The effect, however, is that more and more designers and educators are creating brilliant interactive companions to traditional learning. Here are five favorite animations from the past year that will allow science and math teachers (as well as those in the Humanities) to kick off 2016 with a bang:
This beautiful stop-motion animation offers a moving case study about the effects of urbanization on pollution. The "WWF Brazil - Marine Program" video, made in collaboration between scenes. and Wildgroeiers, highlights critical issues of conservation and biodiversity for any age group.
3. Astronomy
BBC Earth has designed a clear and compelling motion graphic to emphasize the size of the universe and the speed of earth's galactic travels. The 3D visualization employs time and scale to bring astrophysics to life.
Software engineer Cameron Beccario (@cambecc) has programmed a stunning representation of the earth's weather conditions. With regularly updated ocean currents, waves, temperatures, and anomalies, this interactive globe allows students to zoom in and rotate a la Google Earth. The educational opportunities range from oceanographers analyzing climate change to historians studying ancient trade routes.
The recent Ebola panic prompted The Washington Postto create this precise simulation that compares the disease's spread to other historical pandemics. Although the original interactive graphic pre-dates 2015, the updates are important to medical students and social scientists who are trying to track contraction, infection, transmission, and vaccination.
Honorable Mention: Ecology & Forestry
This seemingly simple motion graphic by Nature Video brings into startling relief the rate of global deforestation. Researchers made 421,529 separate measurements around the world to produce an irrefutable data-driven image of the changing planet.
For more resources, take a look at last year's five best animations, or some of our other posts about animations in the classroom:
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