Stop Motion Studio - Multimedia
The app
Stop Motion Studio is an app for creating stop-motion videos ideal for beginners and professionals. It offers many options and possibilities, allowing the user to learn and gradually professionalize stop-motion animations. The app allows taking pictures and editing frames, adding audio clips and titles, placing filter effects, and more. It can be used on any device, making an iPad or cellphone the only tool needed for creating stop-motion animations.
Using Stop Motion Studio to foster creativity
Having the students produce stop-motion animations is excellent for fostering creativity. Assembling this type of animation results in an exciting task that can efficiently address students' interests in using Lego or any other toy. It also provides an opportunity for self-expression and imagination while learning. Also, it promotes abilities such as collaborative work, curiosity, sensible risk-taking, and the invention of novel ideas. All these elements have proven to foster creativity (Beghetto, 2014).
Different apps shown on this blog can enable users to engage students' interest in learning, which prepares the ground where creativity can sprout. However, apps like Stop Motion Studio allow students to have significant creative experiences that direct their knowledge to higher taxonomy levels, increasing their learning and fostering creativity.
Elaborating stop-motion animations can be used for various classes and topics. When asking the students to explain an idea to the class through a stop-motion video, they needed to understand the topic first (Hoban & Nielsen, 2014), which opens the use of stop-motion projects. Some examples are explaining historical events, showing scientific processes, describing mathematical operations, making book trailers, practicing other languages, and designing videos for social problems.
Video elaborated by Álvaro Pérez and Shah García
Pedagogical Orientations
As well as with any other app that gives students the capacity to create, the development of the students' creativity depends on the instructional approach. Here are some pedagogical orientations on how to take better advantage of Stop Motion Studio as a creative developmental tool:
Increase students' motivation using famous Stop Motion Animations like Wallace and Gromit.
Help students to follow a proper design thinking process using tools like storyboards.
Making a stop-motion video is a task that demands a lot of patience and perseverance. Help students to develop their creative metacognition by reflecting on the cost and benefits in a self-evaluation.
Help students gradually improve their stop motion technique using the app's possibilities. Some examples are using an external camera, tracing composition lines for better movement, using a green screen, or adding facial expressions to Legos.
References
Beghetto, R. A., & Kaufman, J. C. (2014). Classroom contexts for creativity. High Ability Studies, 25(1), 53–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/13598139.2014.905247
Hoban, G., & Nielsen, W. (2014). Creating a narrated stop-motion animation to explain science: The affordances of “Slowmation” for generating discussion. , 42, 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.04.007
Illustrator activity of the tutorial.
Hi Álvaro,
You have created a well-rounded blog post and expressed your ideas about stop-motion animation and Stop Motion Studios very well. I like the examples you have used especially the use of Lego as this is a great medium to help students start using stop-motion animation and its popularity with children will make this engaging for many. One thing that would have been beneficial to read is the limitations of the technology and how teachers can combat this in the classroom. Overall, I enjoyed reading this blog and found the images and videos used very informative.
Margot
Hi Álvaro,
Stop motion is a very interesting example of multimedia and it's great that you've given a more detailed explanation of how it works and can be used to develop students' creativity! You also give a video of yourself doing it in your blog, which reinforces that stop motion is a great example of how to use it to develop students' creativity.
Yiyun Zhang 11/04/2023