Stop Motion Animation

Our school district recently purchased SAM animation software and pushed it out to all our student computers. It is a very easy program designed to make stop motion animation videos. Right now our kids are "playing" with it to learn the software but I can see some very practical applications using it in science. In this video you will see the kids "playing" and then it actually being used as part of an experiment. I was in the room helping with the video taping with the children and it was very easy for the kids to set up. Today one of our first grade teachers were talking about some eggs they are hatching in the classroom and I immediately thought that would be a great use for the software. You can program it to take pictures (using a web cam) on a specific time schedule around the day the eggs are suppose to hatch. We had a lively debate about plants moving in my classroom. The kids could use the program to set up an experiment to see if plants move. The free demo can be downloaded HERE. The software and a site license can be purchased for $299 which I thought was pretty good for an entire school.

Comments

Beth said…

Awesome ideas! I love the possible applications in longer-term science experiments. And the options for writing (and narrating) simple stop motion stories are endless!

Definitely something I'll be mentioning to the wiki-wiks who buy our software :)

April 6, 2011 at 6:16 PM

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Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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