Green screen and Animation for Learning.

So recently I ran a course in Bury which covered Green Screen and Animation techniques and how, as an educator, you can use these to enhance your lessons. I am a particular fan of both of these for a few reasons which I will cover below.

Green screen

The overall benefit of a green screen is that it puts children into their learning, whatever it is they can be immersed in it. This could be a virtual school trip, a revisit of a trip using pictures taken, children demonstrating a particular area of their learning or just entering an immersive world! Imagine speaking at the House of Commons at the age of 9! Or performing some performance poetry at Wembley! You could even explain about the Great Wall of China on location! This could be a very powerful tool in any class teachers arsenal. All that is needed is some green/dark blue material and a decent Green Screen app, I prefer Green screen by DoInk and Veescope but others are available.

Animation

For me animation is the other side of the coin, if Green Screen is immersing a child in their learning then Animation is the child manipulating it. This means that learners really need to think carefully about what they are explaining and what the content is. There are a couple of apps that I really enjoy using; stop motion studio and tellagami. Stop motion studio does what the name suggests, it collects pictures together as frames and then plays this through as a video. I’ve used this when children have demonstrated how to build an Anderson shelter with plasticine, or demonstrating how to be safe online. Tellagami is a much more digital app. Once you go into the app you choose a Gami (an avatar or character) using the Gami users can record their voice, once happy with this the Gami’s mouth will move explaining whatever has been recorded.

The adults on the course thoroughly enjoyed using these skills in a small piece of project based learning. From this it’s hoped that they can go back to school and continue to use their creativity to continue applying green screen and animation to enhance learning in their lessons.