Well, I have an excuse for not knowing this one, as it isn’t a real word anyway. ‘Slowmation’: an abbreviated form of ‘Slow animation’. Developed by Garry Hoban from Wollongong University (yes, it’s in Australia) it’s a nice little idea that he describes as “a simplified way for university or school students to design and make a narrated stop-motion animation that is played slowly at 2 frames/second to explain a concept or tell a story.”
The quote is from the Slowmation website, a useful resource for teachers who wish to engage their students in a challenging and potentially rewarding activity. Take a look at some of the examples – it may inspire you to start your own Slowmation project. Here’s one for you lazy types.
I came across the Slowmation notion while browsing a new learning design website from Diana Laurillard. Learning Designer is a neat idea – again, a quote:
“The Learning Designer suite of tools enables teachers to share their good teaching ideas. It is intended to help a subject teacher see how a particular pedagogic approach can be migrated successfully across different topics. There are sample patterns to browse and edit, or you can design your own from scratch.”
It’s still new and growing (an early release version), so the number of examples is somewhat limited, but will worth a look. For each example there’s a detailed instructional plan, including suggested times for each phase of the teaching and learning episode. And perhaps you’ll end up contributing. Browsing is easy: I was intrigued by the curiously worded ‘Curated designs’*, and that is where I found Slowmation.
‘Higher education‘ already has eight entries, including examples on wikis and blogging. And vocational education isn’t ignored, as a heading anyway, and I’m sure examples will soon appear.
The site is also pleasingly transparent, with an area devoted to submitted designs that shows reviews, designs not yet reviewed as well as users’ public spaces (a reminder that you need to register to avail yourself of the joys of Learning Designer).
* For an excellent account of this concept, see Curation: Creatively Filtering Content.