Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Playing with iMotion


iMotion is an iOS app from the Apple Store. Indeed, I did not take any notice of this app though I had it installed in my devices (since...(don't know when)?)

Thanks to Cathy Hunt who conducted the sharing on the use of this app at the iSummit 2016 ADE workshop - I learnt I have one tool that is simple yet could do interesting stuff in my device. What's more, it's pretty fun and free - these are considerations (though not core) on accessible the tool is - for learning!

Simplicity is good
While Cathy only got to show us and got us try some basic features - I think that was enough, and left it to our creativity and imagination to see how they could be applied for teaching & learning (both teachers and students).

It is a very easy to use tool - only a couple of buttons to tap on. Then we can save our work either as a video or a gif animation file.

As mentioned, it is a very simple tool - so, don't expect to have sophisticated editing features like what iMoviei provides! Well, sometimes, simple is beauty! Lesser distractions, to the point - and that's what the students need to have if we needed them to focus!
[Through observations over these years, we notice that many students, and sometimes teachers, would spend more time to address the aesthetic aspect than the content!]

What does it produce? Well, for newcomer - some of you might recall long long ago, Clay Animation (LINK) was a pretty popular form of the media-related activity where students underwent workshops to use cameras and a range of tools to create short films. Comparing the kind of preparation needed in the past, and now just a device on hand, the portability has indeed make far more accessible to anyone - young or adult, novice or expert. OK, the expert will start to describe what's lacking in the tool... nevertheless, it really depends on the use and its context. For classroom teaching and learning, I think that is sufficient. What's more important is how do we want the learning experience to be like and how we could actually leverage the features in the tool effectively to address the intent of of the lesson activity.