Static vs. Animated

Static graphics or animated graphics: which is more beneficial to learning?

My first thought is that I prefer animated images to static ones. However, there are some occasions that the static image is helpful, such as with a complicated process, having the static image in front of me to take my time studying it and to review as many times as necessary may be more beneficial that a fleeting animation.

Ideally I would like to have both static images and animated images presented to me when learning something new. That way I could watch the animated to get a full overview with all of the microsteps, then use the static image as a guide and a reminder.

Here is a cute video to show a child how to tie a shoe. I think the video would be more helpful than the step by step static images in the link below the video.

Watch Cowboy Roy Show A Shoe How To Tie Itself

Step-by-Step Static Images

http://wondertime.go.com/learning/article/how-to-tie-shoes.html

Educational Art Video: William Kentridge

One of my favorite sources of educational art videos is Art21 by PBS. This site is such a great resource of contemporary artists. This particular video is about artist William Kentridge. It is about an hour-long, but I would recommend watching the first 5 min or so because it covers a couple of my favorite examples of his work. It shows what I think is some of the more interesting thing that he does, primarily 2D medium, he is a good artist to show students because he uses simple drawings and paper to create short films and tells stories. His charcoal videos are beautiful. He starts by drawing an image, then erases and adds to the drawing to make a stop motion sort of animation. I love that you can still see some of the previous marks, so that a character will leave a trail as it moves.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1619754531/

“Did you know 2.0” and “Pay Attention” videos

I would like to see the Did You Know 2.0 video with more current statistics than those from 2006, I tried to find one with no luck…One video claiming to be Did you Know 2011 was still using the old statistics. The video references Myspace, I wonder how it compares to today with Facebook. Still, I did find this video very interesting and entertaining. My favorite part was towards the end where it says “We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist…in order to solve problems we don’ even know are problems yet.”

 

I liked the Pay Attention video more, I liked that it often had the source of the information at the bottom of the screen.  It had interesting ideas on how to better engage students and to utilize technology that the students are already know how to use and enjoy using and bringing it into the classroom, making the information more meaningful and interesting to them. There are so many benefits to using technology to teach and this video touched on the subject nicely.