Whittier International, Edie, Grades 1 and 5 - 6 hours
This week (and last) I planned for my lesson and taught. I did as much planning as I could for this. I was excited to teach the 5th graders about animation. I wasn't aware of what animation really was until about high school. I thought it would be great for the kids to understand that what they watch and see on TV are most likely animations. My lesson plan was to create a gif of an expression or idea using 3 sequential pictures of themselves. The class seemed to really enjoy the thought of having themselves animated in the digital world. Due to some privacy, I will not be posting the student examples up, but my own that I created for the students.
I created a webpage on my own personal website with an example for the students to follow along with visuals in case there was anyone who was confused. I created the lesson plan to share as well. There are plenty of gif makers online, but because of the school internet security, I had to make the gifs myself. If you are interested in creating gifs for your class and is not able to have the students create the gifs themselves, you may have to create them on your own time outside of the school's internet. My suggestions is GifMaker.Me. It's a helpful tool if you don't have a program to create your own gifs.
I had to adapt to the changes in case the school internet security wouldn't allow it. I suggest that you allow some wriggle room for adaptability as well. Digital media is always quite finicky and may require you to jump through some hoops. But overall, it was extremely fun! I hope the students are able realize how powerful the digital world can be for them.
