Fuzzy memories of being lulled to sleep in dimly lit seminars rooms. Sophorific PowerPoints, KeyNotes and Prezis. Experts who haven’t set foot in the classroom in years distributing teaching tips. At one time or another, teachers and administrators have all experienced some not-so-exciting professional development.
That’s not the story of this past June’s Tech Training for teachers.
18 Lower School faculty practiced what we value in our teaching: creativity, process, collaboration and experimentation. Stop Motion animation was our vehicle and teaching artists from The Good School, an organization devoted exclusively to Stop Motion Animation, were our guides.
Our Lower School teachers got messy making their background and characters. They lit, filmed and developed a sound track.
Some of the joyous experimention is here:
And a few of our pedagogical and classroom management “take aways:”
- When you create a stop motion, pay attention to the camera angle. This year we tried to set the camera at a 90’ angle from the background and story characters. This gave the movies a storybook feel.
- When capturing frame by frame, communicate well with the members of your team. Otherwise, extraneous hands can become part of the scene.
- Adjusting to the “sense of the meeting” seems to happen on its own. For example, as a team of animators creates their cast they naturally adjust the scale of the characters so that they can act together.
- When they animate, children and teachers explore narrative, materials, and math. They solve complex design problems as a team.
The Lower School looks forward to many exciting classroom animation projects this coming school year!