Owners
What it's all about
The idea is to raise global food issues to kids in secondary school (Yr 7-9). It is not about your 5-a-day or how to cook. Instead, we will be looking at political, economic and moral issues relating to food and the production of it.
We are going to produce a short animated film on the topic, to be shown during the session with the class.
A short summary:
1. FARMING
2. FACTORIES
3. TRANSPORT
4. MARKETING
This will be followed up by a class discussion and some organised games. The kids will be able to keep the work sheets we give them and a small 'pack' containing posters, badges and other fun things to help them remember what we have talked about during the session.
What's needed to make it a reality
NEEDED:
- animators
- a small cast
- other contributors for the film
- volunteers to conduct the sessions
- general volunteers to produce the 'pack'
We welcome contribution from anyone! If you think you can help in any way then please get in touch! We are open to ideas!
- animators
- a small cast
- other contributors for the film
- volunteers to conduct the sessions
- general volunteers to produce the 'pack'
We welcome contribution from anyone! If you think you can help in any way then please get in touch! We are open to ideas!
Comments
Coincidentally, a student at the University of West England added an idea this week about how he wanted to use animation in schools to educate children. He's already had some experience of doing this, so it might be worth getting in touch with him to find out if he can offer you any advice in how to go about setting up your own project. You can check his idea out here:
http://www.junction49.co.uk/idea/1844/animation_in_education/
There is also a website called Animation for Education, which might be useful. It also has quite a few videos on animation, so you can see what sort of thing has been done before.
http://www.animationforeducation.co.uk/
As you're a student at Kingston you can access up to £750 to help turn your idea into reality. I see you've already got in contact with Martin, your Volunteer Support Officer, which is great. He can help you with advice, funding, training and general support throughout the course of the project. Check out the Kingston University page:
http://www.junction49.co.uk/university/19/kingston_students_union/
Let us know if you need any more help or advice, we're always happy to help :-)
Sarah Report Abuse
This ideas coming along really well and I can't wait to get more volunteers involved. Let me know if you have any queries, concerns, questions or ideas and I'll see what I can do. Speak to you soon.
Martin Report Abuse
Sorry for the slow reply! Your idea sounds fun and has really clear aims, looks brill.
If you want to use animation in your project, the first thing I would do is check if the school has any 'Digital Blue' cameras. These are animation cameras made for schools - they have become very popular in education in the past year or so. If there are none available, you can get one for under £100 now. Depending on how you run the workshop and how many kids there are will determine whether you need more than one camera. Bear in mind they connect live to a computer, so you will need an equal number of computers/laptops on hand. Again, check the school equipment first as most schools already have loads of computers. If you can sort all of this out through the school, that's great as it wouldn't have cost anything. However, if you want to take your idea round to different schools, it would be a better idea to purchase a couple of Digital Blues and a couple of laptops with funding (this is what I did last year).
Okay, once you've sorted out the camera/capture stuff, it's all up to you what else needs to be purchased. The basic materials for me is a big tub of plastercine, assorted colours (kids absolutely love it), you can get these from school suppliers. Also I usually get a pack of small assorted colour foam sheets, or felt sheets, whatever you want to call them! These can be cut and stuck to make groovy shapes, characters and forms just like the lazy cow on the Anchor Butter advert!
Depending on how complex you want the animations to be - you could also buy a couple of big green foam sheets, for chroma-keying (green screen) - for which you can animate your characters in front of, and then dub in a different background afterwards on the computer. (You can see an example of this in my video entitled 'Space Evaders')
Let me know if you need further advice!
Jack Norris :D Report Abuse
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