Animation in the Math Classroom

I am always looking for and playing around with ways to use animation, stop motion, and movie making in my math classroom because I have several students who would rather do something like that.  In addition, they enjoy watching animated clips showing how to do math.

So today I decided to look specifically at animation in the classroom today because the tools for creating animated videos has become more and more available.

According to an article on Creative Educator,  students who spend their time just memorizing material rather than understanding and internalizing it are less likely to create links between their prior knowledge and the new knowledge. Allowing students to create digital animation can help them increase their understanding of the topic.

Animation allows students to create their own unique meaningful connections to the material.  When they create animation, they have to make their own graphics which helps them implement their own visual mathematical representations.  In addition, they learn, understand, and internalize better.

Animation can meet the four conditions needed for effective learning by providing active engagement, group participation, frequent feedback, and connections to real world context.

I know from personal experience that you don't need to download anything special if you want to animate objects.  That can be done simply by using keynote or power point.  I generally use keynote to animate equations and such.

This is an example of animation I made using keynote for congruent triangles.

 

 I hope this works as I don't usually upload quicktime movies.  It is done keynote so it is animated.  Todo this, students have to create a storyboard, write a script, make it and export it.

As for using animation like cartoons, there are lots of free apps out there that provide the student with the ability to create characters who show each other how to do a problem.  I don't have one done at the moment but I have used animation to show the process.  I'll find those and share them with you at a later date.

Let me know what you think about this.  I'd love to hear from people.