Animating Learning with PowerPoint
Developing learner's creativity and ICT capabilities
The power of PowerPoint
There are a number of applications that can be used to create animations. Some of these are quite a challenge to get to grips with and as a result are quite a challenge to teach to children. There are, however, many packages that offer us the facility to animate what happens on the screen relatively easily.
One of these packages is Microsoft's PowerPoint. This application is almost always associated with text-based presentations but it has rather impressive animation capabilities that can bring learning to life.
These animation capabilities can be used in the classroom to help learners further develop their ICT capabilities as well as exploring Art and Design and media in a creative way.
Have a look at the kind of animation that you will be able to create as a result of this tutorial:
Why animate?
Learners use a variety of resources as they research topics or generally try to 'find things out'. These resources can range from traditional textbooks and library books to multimedia resources accessed from CD Rom or the internet.
We can use applications such as PowerPoint to help children add a degree of twenty-first century dynamism to their learning when they present what they have found out as part of their research topic.
Research suggests that digital learners are keenly motivated by tasks that are embedded in digital methodologies such as this - with the onus being on learners becoming the creators of digital content rather than solely being the consumers of it.
The examples that are contained within this tutorial page demonstrate how animation with PowerPoint can enhance and enrich learning mainly in Environmental Studies. The tutorial itself though focuses on how animation can be used within Art and Design.
The skills that are developed in the tutorial can be applied to almost any curricular area. All that is required is a bit of imagination
The PowerPoint tutorial
The main PowerPoint tutorial was inspired by a short animated film called, 'Laughing Moon' by Kiyoshi Nishimoto (2000). This film is part of a video called Starting Stories available from the British Film Institute.
The animation in this film shows how a selection of shapes can be animated to create a series of imaginative and entertaining characters and scenarios. This could be used as the stimulus for a similar task for children to do with PowerPoint.
PowerPoint file: Tutorial - Animating with PowerPoint
Some animation examples: