Mobile movie production

As a Chemistry teacher, I really like the ability that this tool provides to have my students create their own low tech animations. One of the hardest things to convey in my subject is that all particles of matter are always moving except at absolute zero. That just does not convey well in 2D representations, but with this tool, students can show that movement very easily. As a Science Department, we envision continuing to use Stop Motion Studio to have students create short videos that demonstrate their understanding of a process or concept. I think this could be a powerful tool to use for review as each group in a class could be tasked to create a video on one of the concepts covered, and then share them with each other. As the videos include some text but are not text dependent, they could be especially useful for ELL students and students with differing abilities. The students could even be tasked with writing out the vocabulary used in the video in multiple languages to further assist in academic language acquisition. While greater functionality is available in the paid version or for smaller incremental purchases, we did not find them necessary to create a quality product for our purposes. Some schools and districts might discourage the use of student devices and requiring them to download the app on a personal device for classroom use, but our school only has a limited number of laptops available for classroom usage and no tablets so the personal student device option was the best for us. In the future, I think we might create a dedicated Drive or Dropbox Folder for student projects, but the students would need to have that Drive or Dropbox account already set up before submission. It would make it easier however, to store and share the videos for review purposes. Overall, I am excited to think about more ways that my class can use this tool.

I love this app as a creation tool. It allows kids a fun, creative way to tell a story. It challenged my younger students to think in sequence and allowed my older students to create some very detailed, intricate movies. I've done stop motion projects in the past, but they've never quite turned out this well. I give students a lot of choice when they are creating products and this will definitely be one option I will reuse in the future. I have had more students say they went home and downloaded this app than any other I've used this year. It's definitely a fan favorite this year. One main challenge that the students have faced is accidentally moving the iPad when taking the pictures. The button to capture an image is on the side of the iPad and pressing it tends to move that side of the iPad forward. It's something that the kids will be able to handle with some practice. Other than that, it's a VERY easy app for even my young kiddos to use!