The K-12 education system has a critical role to play in shaping the students for the future. Conventional learning framework, at times, fails to fulfil the comprehension needs of young learners as it has not kept pace with the latest pedagogical trends.
This is where animation technology comes in. The inclusion of animation in K-12 classrooms allows educators to make the curriculum more engaging with better learning outcomes.
In this blog, we explore how educators and K-12 institutions can use animation to keep the curriculum engaging.
What is animation and what are its benefits?
Animation is a method that educators have implemented to make classroom teaching easier, better, and more effective. Using educational videos in the animated form helps students to learn effectively.
The benefits of animation in K-12 education are many. It helps to present any concept in a more lively and visually engaging manner. Such dynamically illustrated content can be retained in students’ memory for a much longer duration than traditional learning techniques.
Therefore, an increasing number of K-12 educators are now leveraging the opportunities that animation offers for depicting dynamic content.
Since animations can explicitly depict changes over time, they are best suited to teaching processes and procedures in K-12 learning. When animation is used to present dynamic content, it can mirror both the changes in position and the changes in form, which are fundamental to learning this type of subject matter.
How to keep K-12 curriculum engaging with animation
Here are some of the ways you can use animation to keep the K-12 curriculum engaging for students-
1. Use animations for subject-wise topics
Make sure to animate different chapters of various subjects such as mathematics, science, history etc., to make students easily relate to the concepts taught.
The challenges that the K-12 learners face in understanding the concept can be overcome with animation as complex topics can be quickly and conveniently demonstrated visually with various fun elements.
Further, it gives students the advantage of interacting with the content at their own pace as the animated course modules can be paused and played again to offer more time for young learners to cope with the subject’s complexities.
2. Choose the appropriate style
Animations are diverse and can be used for multiple purposes. Some of the popular types of animations for K-12 include-
- 2D and 3D cartoon animation
- Motion graphics
- Whiteboard animation
- Hand-drawn animation
- Stop-motion animation
- Infographic animation
To be able to make the right choice, keep your audience at the center. In the case of K-12, make sure to design your course curriculum based on the behaviors and demands of online learners. Understanding their needs will help you produce animated videos that attract them and enhance their learning capacity.
3. Blend animation with other learning strategies
Since animations are quite flexible in nature, they can be used as either a standalone strategy or blended with new/ existing learning strategies to enhance learner engagement.
Apart from this, animations can also be used to explain complex concepts or as reinforcement tools in K-12 classrooms. The best part here is that learners of any age groups can benefit from interactive animated learning modules. There are multiple approaches available for students of kindergarten, elementary and middle school learners with exciting and attention-catching animations to appeal to varied K-12 age groups.
Teachers can make learning more efficient as well as improve productivity using these approaches available for different age groups. They can use narratives, sound or music to add more power to learning, thus allowing every learner to connect to the topic.
4. Make PowerPoint custom animations
PowerPoint custom animations allow teachers to add more value and interactivity to keep K-12 students focused and engaged.
Designing an animation in PowerPoint along with multimedia elements such as text, sound and graphics, can be an excellent way to add interest and excitement for K-12 students learning a particular concept. Such visual interaction would also encourage more participation from students.
Although there are multiple ways to design an animation slide for different content, a well-designed animation slide should include a title, specific information on the topic, animation to reinforce the concept, along with a hyperlink to any other additional information.
5. Use animation to make visualizations easy
When it comes to K-12 learning, there are several topics that are difficult to understand and require more focused teaching efforts to provide the necessary clarity to students.
Learning videos with 3D animation can be used to offer detailed information and explanation about such content /topics. Blending various multimedia components such as video, audio, images, and texts, teachers can make the concepts much easier to understand. This helps students with varying IQ levels to grasp the topics with ease.
Multimedia presentations also help students gain a conceptual understanding of a topic in visual form, thus keeping them engaged and allowing their imagination to be broadened further.
In conclusion
In this age of technology-driven education, students increasingly expect as well as demand customized and engaging multimedia content. Educational institutions can create animations with customized visual cues and graphics. It serves the dual functions of breaking down/explaining complex concepts and engaging students in the learning process.
However, what educators need to keep in mind is that animation can significantly increase enthusiasm for learning with proper usage only. Too much of it can be a distraction without offering any real benefits.
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