Animate It!

Each year my students participate in the local science fair.  Some students wonder how to visually show judges the changes their experiment undergoes for several days or months.  Also, restrictions on bringing hazardous or live materials prevent students from visually demonstrating and explaining the procedure or results.  By using the app, Animate It! students could show a time-lapse video of their project to the science fair judges and also share with their classmates.

Using the app, Animate It! I created a time-lapse video of the chemical reaction between sulfuric acid and zinc in a few seconds compared to over five minutes.

My Animate It! chemical reaction video on YouTube 

Using the Animate It! app can allow me to redefine instruction by allowing me to capture a lengthy demonstration and condense it to a few seconds allowing the focus to be on the classroom discussion of the chemical principles involved.  Many times I will refer back to a previous demonstration or student conducted experiments to review or present new material and I am counting on students memories to remember what they saw.  If a student was absent then they missed out on the experience.  Now I could simply show the videos again or place them in the learning management system for the class.  An important part of the chemistry class is the observations and connections to content students make through conducting experiments or watching observations.  I have wanted to assess what students have learned from these experiences.  I can now embed an Animate It! video into an online assessment, a task I could not previously have envisioned without technology.