Someone on the School-it list recently asked about software to make animations of the motion of molecules. This session will be a quick review of three different programs for making computer animations. Gcompris is a suite of applications that has an object oriented drawing app that can be used for simple animations frame by frame. It works with students as young as K-2. Scratch is a program for making digital mashups. It takes a different approach to animation; students program the motions of the objects that they want. Scratch captures the imagination of students starting around grades 4-5. Finally, Pencil is a more feature rich animation program than the one in Gcompris. Pencil’s drawing editor has many features to facilitate the animation process. By middle school students are prepared to use Pencil’s more sophisticated interface to get higher production values in their animations. None of these applications are cloud-based, but all three are available for download online free of charge in Mac, Windows, and Linux versions.
