Animations aid understanding
Pupils have been watching animations in science lessons for years; educational films use animations to help to explain a model or underlying micro-structure. More recently, web-technology has increased the access to animations, and animations feature on an increasing number of web-pages describing a scientific concept.
A couple of years ago, while teaching a junior physics class about Brownian motion, I showed them a short animation produced by Minute Physics, “Albert Einstein: The Size and Existence of Atoms”. Watching the video certainly helped them to improve their understanding of the concept. This, in itself, wasn’t new to me; after all this was just the latest incarnation of an animation used to show the underlying microstructure that explained the concept. In effect, this is what Einstein, and others before him, were able to imagine when they saw the movement of the tiny particles of pollen or smoke dancing under the microscope.
Pupils as makers
However, I also thought it would be interesting to get my pupils to create an animation to explain the concept. I have tried a variety of ways to create pupil animations, but I think that making stop-motion animations is the best. Although it is a lengthy and painstaking process, pupils really enjoy the tactile experience of moving around particles on the desk to represent the molecules in a gas, and I think it helps them to internalise and really understand the intricacies of the model.
Feedback from students has been excellent; it is clear that they enjoy the lesson, and like working creatively in science lessons. But I was most convinced that this was a worthwhile project when I started to observe some quite spontaneous but really sophisticated peer-review taking place. Pupils were watching each other’s animations as they were being built, and noticing the scientific inaccuracies in the models, as well as praising them for their work.
Recently, I tried a similar exercise with an upper sixth class; this time considering the workings of the internal combustion engine. Again, the results were impressive, as you can see from the short film below.
Digital Education 