Last week I was lucky to be involved with an interesting project. LTS had organised a GlowMeet where Oscar Stringer would teach stop motion animation to primary classrooms around Scotland.

Oscar worked with a group of children at Newmains Primary the lesson was video conferenced via Marratech. The conference was watched by classes from around Scotland some of whom joined in with the lesson.

I was working with Oscar’s groups classmates next door. I was also nice to see Stuart Oliphant, the lts video conferencing expert, who helped Sandaig out many times.

There were a few North Lanarkshire schools watching the show and taking part. It is an interesting way to learn from an expert and one worth doing again. The children in several classes made successful animations which have been posted on the North Lanarkshire ICT & Technical Services website.

Oscar did an excellent job of explaining the basics of animation, he has a wealth of experience and tons of practical tips. I noticed that the children I was working with, once they had started found it difficult to stop and watch the screen and I sometimes was too busy ‘helping’ to stop the children to listen. If this style of learning practical tasks via video conferencing becomes more common we may have to experiment with different ways of timing and delivering instruction. I’ll be interested to see video of the second animation workshop on Friday June 5th, unfortunately I’ll be busy as will the Newmains p6 but I hope to be able to revisit them when they view the recording of the 2nd animation GlowMeet which is aiming to improve their skills.

I am also looking forward to seeing animations from around Scotland on the glow site and being able to replay Oscar’s class.

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