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Using Video-Making to Redirect Students from "The Game"

 This was my second year of teaching technology to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. I love my job. The return engagement gave me a chance to set new goals. Among them were to give my students opportunities to express their creative natures. What I found was that giving them the freedom to create was not enough. My students, while young, have already begun to play The Game.

You know The Game. The one in which you figure out what your teacher wants so you can give it to him and make him happy. The problem is when the teacher (in this case, me) tries to encourage freedom by answering questions like, “What program do I use?” with answers like, “Which one do you want to use?” students who are adept at The Game become frustrated; they know the questions to ask but are not getting answers they can use.

My “Game” players had honed their skills in their short careers, allowing them to complete assignments quickly and move on to other, allegedly more appealing, activities. I don’t want to say that they were not meeting expectations, but few went beyond those expectations to show ingenuity, creative design, or unique interpretations. To be fair, as implied above, these qualities are not always encouraged.

My first job was to expose them to another way of looking at an assignment. I had to break away from the recipe method where everyone produces a replica of the teacher example. My solution was to emphasize process over product, to recognize those who found hidden features and applied them to their project. It took time to end The Game in my class, but it was only the first hurdle.

The next, more daunting hurdle, was feeding the hunger I had created. In my second year, students began to seek out that freedom, but many mastered the basic skills of presentations and grew bored. They began to revert to a “finish quickly to move on” practice. I needed to provide two key elements: challenges and tools. I had to stay two steps ahead of them.

The Challenges (AKA assignments): present tasks with various paths to completion, allow and encourage individual flair, expose students to new tools.

The Tools: apps, websites, and extensions — especially those that allow open-ended creation, used to construct a tangible representation of student learning.

There is a lot of software out there. Some good; some not as good. It’s a great problem for us to have, having to sort through so many ideas to find the ones that best meet student needs. GoAnimate for Schools has proven to be both a favourite in my class and versatile enough to be used in a variety of ways.

The creation process in GoAnimate for Schools is flexible and allows for nonlinear development. This appeals to my students as they emphasize differing attributes of the project due to personal preference and task goals.

By providing my students with challenges that value inventive solutions and modelling engaging tools, my approach has helped creativity flourish. Giving students freedom to be creative was only the first step they needed. Encouragement and great tools to get them to the finish line.

Millions of Reasons to love GoAnimate for Schools

 Having students take time to reflect on learning and to construct something that demonstrates their understanding is a key to the formative assessment process. When students construct a project, their final products often help teachers get a glimpse into their understanding. These products can help make a student’s thinking visible — not only to the teacher but to the world.

Before computers entered the classroom, we used to ask students to make posters or design brochures as a way of showing learning. Most likely, we had students rewrite the definition on a sheet of paper — and then complete a worksheet or two. Sometimes the next step was to test them to make sure they could regulate the meaning — and then we called it a day.

That simplistic approach changed when I got my first class set of computers.

Now students can construct their knowledge by making media rich representations of their learning using GoAnimate For Schools; students are now excited to show their work in this fun and creative way.

Simple to do and oh so powerful. It is this type of engagement that helps students to retain their learning. The student constructed knowledge by sitting down and finding a way to demonstrate mastery of the concept: hyperboles. This is a much richer expression of learning than simply choosing the correct answer on a multiple choice test.

Next time you want students to show you they understand a concept, consider having them create a GoAnimate for Schools project. You’ll find that they will watch their own videos over and over again. Score one for the teacher, in the example above they just learned about hyperboles 200 times!

GoAnimate for Schools is Changing.

There are some big changes coming to GoAnimate For Schools! 

Here are some of the changes you can expect

Retiring Themes

Certain animation themes will be retired on July 15

The themes that are leaving are as follows

1. Space Citizens

2. Blood on The Dance Floor

New Name for Business Friendly

After much consideration, we have decided to change Business Friendly's name to Modern World.

The new name debuts on July 15.

Goodbye Paid Access

Another change is that GoAnimate for Schools will become completely FREE! 

No more paid subscriptions! Any free trials that will expire after 15 July will no longer expire

and any subscriptions that expire past 15 July will not expire either!

Thank you for your paitence.