Students Create Stop Motion Videos with Chromebooks, WeVideo and Ingenuity
While we are always inspired by the creative videos students and teachers share with us, sometimes it’s the amazing stories of hard work and ingenuity off camera that steal the show.
Recently, Illinois Hubble Middle School teacher Heather Adams challenged her students to create stop motion movies. Stop motion is a form of animation. One creates the appearance of continuous action by capturing an image of inanimate objects, slightly moving the objects and then taking another image. The process is repeated and then the sequence is assembled in WeVideo to create a complete scene.
Stop motion can be complicated because it requires a high degree of precision. It’s a challenge even in a professional studio. Yet Heather and her students took on this task without the benefit of fancy camera rigs and isolated sets. Armed with little more than their Chromebooks, WeVideo, and some foam core, the class faced and overcame numerous obstacles. Heather graciously shared her class’ clever solutions and secrets with us:
Top view
We started with a piece of 13.5” x 16.5” foam core.
Scored the top at 3”, 4” and 12.5”. We scored the bottom at 8”.
To secure the correct angles, we used stick pins and an extra piece of 3” x 8” foam core on the sides.
I also ran a line of epoxy down all of the “seams.”
The kids had a great time making their stop motion videos with WeVideo, and this Chromebook stand made it possible for us to photograph on a horizontal surface.
Do you have a similarly great idea for achieving amazing results in your classroom? Drop us a note. We’d love to hear about it and we’ll help you to share it!