Goanimate and Animated cards
I work with the youngest pupils and I wanted to find something I could use for beginners. I have chosen the animation theme. That is because it appeals to my primary school students. I would like to recommend two different websites available on the internet: http://www.goanimate.com and http://www.animatedcards.org
This is how it works
Both of them are websites available on the internet. I will tell you about goanimate first. The basic version of it is for free, but it has limited possibilities. There is also a version you can use if your school is willing to pay for it. The pay- version gives you even more opportunities, but the free version is a great start, especially for young learners.
To be able to use it you need a modern version of Windows, like Windows XP and onwards.
You have to start an account the first time you sign up. Before you start using goanimate you can watch a short instruction demo. It will show you how to use the website.
With this programme you can create your own animations, like a cartoon or comic strip.
You can choose backgrounds, characters and how you want the characters to move. The free- version allows you to create one character of your own or you can use the ones already on the website.
One of the great advantages with goanimate is that you can make the characters speak and they will speak English. You just write what you want your character to say and it will say it. I think this is a valuable function for my young learners. They get to hear “real English”. You can choose from different voices or record your own voice. You can also add music or sound- effects either your own or use the ones on goanimate.
Once you have made your animation of maximum two minutes length, you can save it and play it over and over again. You can let it out on youtube, facebook or even make a DVD.
Animated cards are very much like goanimate. You can use the website for free. Animated cards is even easier to understand and use. It has several prepared themes to choose from, but also gives you free space to write personal greetings. When you have opened the website you choose a theme, a picture and then you can write whatever you want. When you are satisfied with your card you can send it to an e-mail address.
How can we use these websites?
Both these websites are very easy to learn and understand. I am not surprised that my pupils learned to work with them faster than me. We are quite short of computers in my school and these websites allows the pupils to create great things in a short time. I let them create in pairs and it has worked out very well.
The websites allows you to create suitable learning situations for beginners. They can be used for many different topics and subjects.
-I like…..
-Favourite food, colour, animal……
-To work with feasts and holidays.
-Nursery rhymes and poems
-Feelings and friendship
-Presentation of a friend, pet, family- member…..
-As a teacher you can create the beginning of a story and let the pupils end it.
Every pupil can feel success. You do not have to be an artist. They feel proud of their work.
They can show it to each others and to their parents. Their animated cards has a receiver. It is fun to send a card and it is fun to get one. They can send their cards to people outside school.
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Hi Petra,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting about our site and it's possibilities for use in the classroom. Last night we launched a separate site specifically for schools.
http://goanimate4schools.com is a project that is near and dear to our hearts. We are huge supporters of integrating technology into education.
Please email me if you have any questions at michelle@goanimate.com
Michelle Wiley
GoAnimate Community Manager
I have chosen to comment on this blog post in addition to that I found Go Animate as an interesting ICT-tool.
ReplyDeleteTodays’ use of internet has increased the use of web based programs for educational use. It is an excellent way to introduce and use programs like this blog and Go Animate for educational purposes. There is though hard to find useful web-sites and by this post I got inspired of Go Animate. Therefore I chose to take a closer look at it and how I could think of using it in my classroom one day.
I did sign up for a free account at Go Animate and started to create a cartoon. After been elaborating with it I found it very fun and easy to use.
However, the poster of this blog wrote that she used this for her beginners in English. I do on the other hand believe this might be tricky to use for beginners in English in order to that the program is in English. Owing to that the program is constructed in English, if you have a class were you know that your students’ have the knowledge to manage this it’s excellent.
Go Animate could be a functional ICT-tool as previously written for the beginners of learning English, but I do believe this could be used up to sixth grade. The blog poster of Go Animate mentioned that this program could be used in many different topics and subject which I have to agree to. It does not give you a limited purpose. It is the teacher who decides the purpose with the task. The older that the students’ are and as their knowledge in use of English gain we can strive for more correctitude and grammatical function in their texts in the use of Go Animate.
Go Animate could be used by the students’ and teachers. When I tried Go Animate I did an introduction to a grammar lesson in English. Usually when you mention grammar around kids you get a negative reaction. In spite of that I hope with the introduction with Go Animate to inspire them that grammar is fun working with, and that we can do it in a fun way but also learning something.
As a result of using Go Animate I would recommend it. However, as everything else we do in school it is important that we know the aim of the tasks we want the students to perform. For our help we have the curriculum and the syllabus for English.