Learning happens in many different ways, speeds, and formats. That said one thing that I have been thinking on lately is the common elements that transcend most all forms of learning. The one overarching theme that I have found to be most consistent is that of breaking learning into parts, pieces, and digestible bite size pieces.

Let me give you a few examples to help you wrap your head around this concept. When you first learned how to drive a car, you did not simply sit in the driver’s seat and drive. The hope is that you were taught basic fundamentals, what the controls within the car do, and the basic rules of driving. After you completed your basic introduction, then you had the opportunity to actually turn the key and drive, probably in a controlled environment, far away from all other objects. The reason I go through this example is to show my previous point that we learn in stages.

This concept of bite size bits of information has been on my mind a lot lately. It seems that we communicate in this way now more than ever. Look at social media for example; twitter posts are 140 characters or less, vine videos are 15 seconds or less, the average faceboook post is no more than a sentence, we text message each other and shorten words to the simplest format to speed up communication and make it more digestible. Sometimes this is good, other times maybe not, but we can all agree that this is the way communication is trending.

So what does this have to do with iCreate to Educate, myCreate, and SAM? Well I’m glad you asked (In my mind there are 10’s maybe even 30’s of you reading this at this very moment, asking this very question…I thank you if you one of those people.). The very concept of animating something is to bring it to life, and if we are going to do this we need to create each step in a number of smaller steps. Using SAM animation or myCreate forces the user to think of the story in a series of smaller parts, and then take those smaller parts and break them into a larger number of even smaller parts. The joy in doing this is figuring out the inner workings of what you are working with, using your imagination, and truly digging into a topic to figure out how it is motivated to move. Your reward is getting to watch the animation and see where you both succeeded and failed.

So our question for you is this: What have you struggled to have a student be interested in, that could be made interesting through animation?

Lets face it; it’s not always easy to get students to connect on every topic, assignment, and task. Through the use of technology, animation, and a little fun sometimes we can get those students to dig in and enjoy the process, enjoy learning, and connect with the topic at hand.

Give it a try, and let us know what happens! We always love to hear for you!

Jason