Slowmo, stop motion, and Animation in Math.

 I have been trying to think of ways to improve instruction and learning in my math class.  In math, we say if a student can explain their thoughts and how they came up with the answer, they are showing understanding but it seems to me that if they can create a video showing their thinking, that works.

Animation is a great way to create equations and move things around without you standing there and explaining every step. Instead, you can have the terms move on screen by themselves, or move to the proper spot.

I have used keynote to create animation showing how two shapes were congruent using transformations.  I used keynote because that is the presentation software I know well.  Right now, I am working on learning to use Google slides for the same thing.  I have several ideas I want to bring to life using animation.

1.  Instead of talking about slope, why not create animation so the word positive climbs diagonally up towards the top, then the word negative is going down to the starting level, the zero slope is a flat area and undefined is a cliff but I'm seeing the words appearing one letter at a time.

I made a quick animation showing the idea for slopes.  My students do not always stop to think about which slope is associated with upwards, downwards, flat, or straight down.  My art isn't the best so forgive me.  I used animation HD for kids.  It was free and so easy to use.


2.  Showing how to solve various equations using animation.  You can have the terms move or you could arrange for a train or other vehicle to move the terms around.  In addition, it is possible to put music in the background or voice over to explain why.

3. Stop motion can be used to show how the area of a circle comes from the circumference of a circle.   If you cut the circle into certain shaped pieces and rearranged, you can rearrange the sections into a parallelogram.

4. Students can create their own characters who talk about a problem on the board, each step done via stop motion or slow motions.

This video was made with Toontastic on my iPad.  I used the characters from it and the three part storyline.  It was an easy app to use.  If you notice, my characters spoke about slope in general as seen or experienced in real life.  It was not that technical in terms of finding the slope itself and it explored the idea that a slope could be positive or negative based on which direction you are going.

The above are just a few suggestions plus two short videos I made using two different apps.  Let me know what you think, I''d love to hear.  I hope these videos work properly.  Have a great day.