Stop-motion animation & learning

Stop motion animation has been around since Man began drawing on cave walls, with images of animals with four pairs of legs depicting movement.  Over centuries techniques and gadgets have developed been developed to display this illusion, but the basics remain.  The optical illusion of movement if you like, simply a collection of still images that flash before your eyes to trick you into thinking there is movement.

In 1600BC the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses ii built a temple to the Goddess Isis which had 110 columns. Ingeniously each column had a painted figure of the goddess in a progressively changed position.  To the horseman or charioteers riding past Isis appeared to be moving. The ancient Greeks also enjoyed decorated pots with figures in successive stages of action spinning the pot to create the sense of motion. 

As far as we know the first attempt to project drawings onto a wall was made in 1640 by Athanasius Kircher with his ‘magic lantern’.  Kircher drew each figure on a separate piece of glass which he placed in his apparatus and projected it onto the wall. 

This type of technique is imitated in toys such as Viewfinders

 

Lowe (2003) suggests that animation can provide learners with explicit dynamic information that is either implicit or unavailable in static graphics.  Although useful, his studies show that the information that was extracted from the animation, and its potential for helping learners construct higher-quality mental models, is probably limited because of its narrow scope.  However animations can be used used for a variety of reasons across a whole range of topics. They are often utilised when there is a need to show learners something not easily seen in the real world. Ainsworth’s work (2007) demonstrates one of the reasons animations are now found so widely, and that is many people believe that animations can help learners come to understand complex ideas more easily.  He says that some people believe that animations can help people learn because they are especially motivating. Alternatively, he sites others who believe there are specific computational properties of animations that match the cognitive demands of a learning task. However, other people view animations with much more suspicion and recommend limiting the use of animations more along the lines of the work of Lowe. That said, Technology has changed the way we learn and the methods that we use as teachers and educators should reflect these changes.

We learn best and most when we enjoy what they are doing. Using animation as a tool to encourage and develop understanding is not only fun but effective.  Using animation can develop skills and competencies in:

• Story telling
• Visual communication
• Cognition, emotional, ethic and aesthetic aspects
• Observation and sensory aspects
• Concentration
• Problem-solving and innovative aspects

So it may be worth a try, and as we all learn and process things in different ways the success will be personal.