RichardRadio

Here is a really nice idea for a class project. Think about the gravity trick and the Lego bases to keep everything aligned and of course the lego itself for the ready made characters and set creation. Youtube Video.

I met a teacher from Vardean, a secondary school in Brighton, called Lee who is doing animation with KS3 and goes to primary schools to do link visits. He recommends Anasazi Stop Motion Animator

Also check out the following links to Rocketboom on children’s animation sessions at the mueseum of the arts in New York via boinx because rocketboom is annoying to link to as the video starts downloading without you asking.
Museum of the arts
or the links direct to the video
Rocketboom 25 Aug 06
Rocketboom 11 Oct 06

I’ve been really pleased to be able to exploit a gap in the end of year timetable to teach Logo to Year 7s this last week of term. I read Papert’s Mindstorm’s last year and was bowled over by it (I used it for the title graphics on in header of this page), but in my placements I didn’t get the chance to teach it properly – one school didn’t do it, the other didn’t do it well and anyway they were just finishing off when I started at the school.

I was wondering if Logo was a little out of fashion as today’s powerful PC’s give children the chance to photoshop, make flash movies or edit digital video; but I had 3 or 4 classes for just an hour and had some wonderful results: the kids were engaged and inspired to produce some wonderful, creative, artistic work. I want to go and show it off to the art department.

Next job is to make sure that it appears on next year’s ICT curriculum. In the UK Logo is considered to be control software (I would debate that) and at the moment this school favours Flowol, which, if you don’t have any physical robots to control is pretty boring. Once I get some real robots to play with (eg. some Feral Robotic Dog’s) control will definately be the highlight of the year.

Update: Art Dept showed some interest. Thanks Miles