Thematic field of training: GENERAL IN-SERVICE TRAINING
Language used for the training: ENGLISH

Host Institutions: NGO Friends of Education – Skopje, North Macedonia
Friends of Education – Macedonian educators hub (friends-of-education.org)  
https://www.friends-of-education.org

Preparation: This course does not require any specific pre-course knowledge or reading, but a pre-course questionnaire will be sent to all participants so that trainers can assess needs and tailor the course appropriately.

Those participants who are not teachers will be asked about their interest in the course and their expectations from it as well as the level of their familiarity with technology. Letters of enrolment will be sent to all participants. Participants will be encouraged to bring their own laptops or other devices if possible like smartphones, tablets, to retain records of any projects & materials that will be created during the course.

Methodology: This course consists of input sessions, workshops, and presentations. It is highly interactive and participants are expected to take an active role in all sessions, experiencing, but also adding, to the activities while employing “WebQuest” and “learning by doing” methodologies.

They will be introduced to stop motion animation, free stop motion app that they can then use in their own classrooms. They can also build upon what is presented, and learn how to adapt and improve what they learn to suit their own and their students’ future needs.

Follow-Up: Participants will be given opportunities to create their own stop motion animations, which can then be shared, discussed, analyzed and, of course, taken away with them after the course to use and re-use in their own classrooms. A Facebook group (EASY4TEACHERS) will be created for all participants to allow discussion and comment to continue beyond the course.

Course description:

The training entitled “Art in Motion: Stop Motion Animation in the Classroom” ” is an innovative workshop course for teacher professional development, under the Erasmus+ Key Action 1: ‘Learning Mobility of Individuals’.

We want to help teachers to meet the challenges of the 4th Education Revolution through integration of different school subjects into one stop motion animation. This course is a great opportunity for participant to create STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) activities in the classroom.

For the uninitiated, stop motion animation is a film making technique that makes inanimate objects appear to move on their own. To make it work, you place an object in front of a camera and take a photo. You then move the object a tiny bit and take another photo. Repeat this process twenty to ten thousand times, plays back the sequence in rapid progression, and the object appears to move fluidly across the screen. It can be used real objects, paper cuts, hand drawings, toys, Lego, plastic figures and other supplies that can be easy created in the classroom.

The course will provide an opportunity for participants to improve their storytelling skills and express themselves freely; encourage them to change their usual mode of thinking and to develop their own computational thinking in a truly collaborative way. They will develop a deeper insight into the concepts, strategies, and the didactic aims and objectives of creating stop motion animations.

Participants will acquire practical knowledge and will be offered familiarity with examples of good teaching practice, and they will be able to share their views and ideas with other course participants. Furthermore, they will be shown how stop motion animations are used in class. The training sessions will be led by experienced teachers and professors with first-hand experience in demonstrating innovative practice and useful educational resources.

Skills focus:

• Creativity
• Self-expression
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Persistence
• Problem solving

Benefits of Stop Motion Animation

• Offers children ownership and autonomy in the film making process
• Explaining tedious concepts and information in a fun way
• Stop motion animation can help children turn their ideas into reality
• Teaches children how stop motion animation works
• Debunks the mechanics of how movie-making happens
• The creative constraint of the medium encourages problem solving
• It’s a simple, hands-on technology that young children can achieve
• Fosters iteration and experimentation through trying and testing
• Supports storytelling
• It offers students autonomy and ownership over the movie-making process and over their finished work, which in turn makes them proud and feel accomplished