As I watched Brian Gravel present to a group of about 20 teachers from Oyster River Middle School in Durham, NH today, it occurred to me that person-to-person, hands-on workshops are becoming more rare, and it's too bad as there really is an indescribable energy to professional development that's interactive, ...

Melissa will be demoing iCreate to Educate, some "greatest hits" animations, and SAM Animation at tonight's Boston Tech Meetup event at the Microsoft Nerd Center. Other companies presenting include: NetBlazr, Blogcastr, Muckrock, Relay Technology, and Abroad 101 ...

If you've spent as much time on YouTube or our website as I have, you can probably recall a stop-motion animation you've seen that looked really good. It was colorful, texturally interesting, and something about the motions really captured your attention. Movies like T-Shirt Wars and Sorry I'm Late are ...

Last week, I was shown an excellent instructional movie created by one of my colleagues here at Littleton High School. I wanted to highlight it to address a question that we often get during our workshops: "How can I use SAM with students when I only have 1 computer in ...

Where is animation particularly effective? Animate things that change: the medium is dynamic, and best suited for showing dynamic processes. Visualizing the unseen: chemical reactions, body systems, celestial motion - interacting with the things humans cannot typically interact with. Modeling complex changes over time: many things change over varying times ...

HUE Animation Studio has been featured in the November 24th 2010 issue of The Sun: The top ten "must have" list of Christmas toys contains the usual predictable suspects of noisy electrical items that will drive us all to mouth-frothing distraction by Boxing Day. So it gives me great pleasure ...

Recently at my high school, we tested our digital microscope (ProScope) with SAM Animation and it worked. Our biology teacher, Vanessa Sandvil, took some neat pictures of tiny freshwater organisms (see screenshots below)! We have yet to use this tool combination with students but we are excited about the prospects ...

With Christmas approaching, HUE Animation Studio is swiftly becoming popular as a gift for budding animators everywhere! Surprise them with something a little different this year. HUE Animation Studio is designed to be easy for beginners to pick up but powerful enough to produce complex stop motion animations in the ...

Once you give SAM Animation to students, they will pick up on how to animate very quickly. It all boils down to repeating 2 steps -- Move Your Prop and Take A Picture. When you are done, press Play and you have created your first animation!I have taught students and ...

Let's face it, none of us really want to do test prep with our students. However, preparing for standardized testing is a reality of public education in this era. So, the question becomes how can we improve test prep and make it more engaging for our students? When students make ...

The Klutz Book of Animation is going on a blog tour, starting with HighTechDad Blog. Check out the link here, and pick up a copy of the book to start animating today! ...

Top-down "Floor Animations" I'm always exploring the web and finding different examples that people have done with stop-action animation and timelapse (aka. stuff you can do with the SAM Animation software). One category of animations that I really like are Top-down "Floor Animations." (Please: if you have a better/actual name, ...

With the recent announcement of Race to the Top awards, i3 awards, and other major initiatives in education - we are hearing a lot about assessment! Whether it is large-scale standardized assessments, alternative assessments, or the vast array of formative assessments - the question "What are our students learning?" has ...

SAM Back To School Tips The first days of school are upon us. SAM Animation is a great tool for early assessments. Consider SAM for traditional first days of school reflection and anticipation activities. Use SAM to help your students express what they remember most about their previous learning experiences, ...

I was playing around with SAM Animation this morning. I wanted to mess around with duplicating, grouping, and using the template button (found on the frame editing tab along with the frame duration slide, duplicate button, group frames into clip button, etc). My goal was to see if I could ...