I am a teacher of elementary age children and I am looking for a website that 5th graders could use to animate story scripts they have written. I would like for them to be able to add voice, but that is not essential.
Must be child appropriate and school appropriate (which aren't quite the same thing).
Thanks for any help.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
macromedia flash?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Oh, I heard about a startup that's working on a site to let you do almost exactly this. They haven't gone live, yet, though. Let me see if I can find them again . . .
Posted by dem (Member # 2512) on :
I would love to do some beta testing for the startup. I found one last year that was great...except for the beer and bikini clad women. The people from that website said they were working on a school version, but nothing yet.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
This is supposed to be aimed at middle school students. I haven't actually used it, though, so I can't say how good it is or if it's usable by 5th graders.
Might be worth a look, though.
Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :
Blender "is a free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License." (Discussed on My Dad's a Geek blog.)
3D for kids He says he'll show how to get the software for free, but the first part of the first video is about the site and how to navigate and download the videos. I've got homework to do, so I'm getting back to that.
Anyway, my most productive search was animation for children and animation by kids. One more site: Amazing Kids! Animation Station has a resources page that I'm not going to take the time to check out right now.
Posted by Vadon (Member # 4561) on :
quote:Originally posted by CaySedai: Blender "is a free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License." (Discussed on My Dad's a Geek blog.)
As much as I love and enjoy Blender, it has a pretty heavy learning curve for use. It would take months of learnin' just to be able to know how to use it, let alone finish a project. I wouldn't recommend it for elementary school kids unless you were able to devote an entire year's instruction to the project. That being said, there are some great resources if you do want to learn it.
When I was a kid, the software I used was Microsoft's 3D movie maker. Unfortunately, that was in 1995 and there aren't any new versions of it that I know of. I also used the Spiderman Cartoon Maker. But that is also really old. (And you're stuck with Spiderman characters.)
I don't know about online animation things that are good for elementary level kids. But I hope you find something. (An alternative to Blender that is easier to learn is anim80r. It's not a web-based program though, so I don't know if that'll work for you. But if the web-based bit is something that you can forgo, I'd check out anim8or to see if it would satisfy your needs.)
Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :
Yeah, I didn't get a change to look into Blender much. I picked it because it was listed on a dad blog. His post sounded like this was what he would have his kids use, but it also sounds like he's got a lot of experience with it.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
Yeah, I can't imagine setting 5th graders up with Blender. It (and quite likely all similarly powerful programs) has a very steep learning curve.
From what I can see, the Storytelling Alice software might be along the lines dem is looking for.
Posted by dem (Member # 2512) on :
I'll look at Alice...we are going to be doing Scratch (object based programming) later and I am really looking for something simple for a project that is already going to take longer than I want.
Blender looks great, but the learning curve is too steep...as suggested.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer (Member # 10416) on :
I've used Blender in the past. It's a very useful tool, but in terms of animating little scripts made by elementary schoolers, Blender is not my first choice.
They have Alice at my school, but I took Computer Programming 1 a year before they introduced it. From what I know of Alice, it seems to be the kind of thing dem is looking for, but I've never used it.