Digital Movies as Teaching Tools

Chem Lab Rules by mkgbrook

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun! ">

This is a link to an animated digital movie that I created through a free shareware animation program known as Goanimate. I felt that the one common movie in Chemistry that tends to be boring and out of date is the Chemistry Lab Safety video. Goanimate.com allowed me to create an avatar Mrs. G to lecture on chemical safety rules in a fun way. Not only can you make animated characters perform crazy feats, you can also go over the rules in three minutes versus thirty.

The digital medium allowed for integration of background music. This can be used as accent to the film topic. You can use music provided or import your own. The feature I liked the most was integrating the MacPro GarageBand to create voice overs for importing into goanimate.com. GarageBand in podcast mode can be used to create narratives. This can be used to give your animated characters speech or create oral downloadable notes for students with severe vision problems.

Another feature provided by goanimate.com is an embeddable link upon completion of your project. This worked instantly versus the link function of blogger.

I can see many applications for both students and teachers in secondary school to utilize goanimate as a fun means to present information. I strongly recommend that you check it out and have fun!

Inquiry based learning tools can be made easy with Spreadsheets.

Interactive inquiry based learning tools can be an effective learning tool. Students may attend to an interactive learning tool more than an old fashioned worksheet. A piece of paper can not tell the student that he is wrong, try again. The complexity of the learning tool can be as simple as a memory regurgitation quiz where there is only one answer and one chance to input that answer or more complex with various responsive hints to guide the student to the desired answer. In our teaching with technology class we were required to make an interactive quiz with set formatting guidelines. I have captured and presented a .jpeg image of my Excel generated .pdf for easy viewing. As you can see you can produce a clean and clear quiz format using excel that can be sent to students for home completion or used to aide special learning students that need computational instructional support.



This is not a tool that can be used for easy viewing of a students problem solution work. It is however a good tool for simple query based assignments. In chemistry I think it is most applicable for vocabulary and naming queries. If you wish to use this for more complex questions that require mathematical work you can give partial credit, if students turn in their work. This is a tool I will definitely be using in my classes.