What is animation and what are its benefits?

Here are some of the ways you can use animation to keep the K-12 curriculum engaging for students-

1. Use animations for subject-wise topics

Make sure to animate different chapters of various subjects such as mathematics, science, history etc., to make students easily relate to the concepts taught.

The challenges that the K-12 learners face in understanding the concept can be overcome with animation as complex topics can be quickly and conveniently demonstrated visually with various fun elements.

Further, it gives students the advantage of interacting with the content at their own pace as the animated course modules can be paused and played again to offer more time for young learners to cope with the subject’s complexities.

2. Choose the appropriate style

Animations are diverse and can be used for multiple purposes. Some of the popular types of animations for K-12 include-

• 2D and 3D cartoon animation
• Motion graphics
• Whiteboard animation
• Hand-drawn animation
• Stop-motion animation
• Infographic animation

To be able to make the right choice, keep your audience at the center. In the case of K-12, make sure to design your course curriculum based on the behaviors and demands of online learners. Understanding their needs will help you produce animated videos that attract them and enhance their learning capacity.

3. Blend animation with other learning strategies 

Since animations are quite flexible in nature, they can be used as either a standalone strategy or blended with new/ existing learning strategies to enhance learner engagement.  

Apart from this, animations can also be used to explain complex concepts or as reinforcement tools in K-12 classrooms. The best part here is that learners of any age groups can benefit from interactive animated learning modules. There are multiple approaches available for students of kindergarten, elementary and middle school learners with exciting and attention-catching animations to appeal to varied K-12 age groups.

Teachers can make learning more efficient as well as improve productivity using these approaches available for different age groups. They can use narratives, sound or music to add more power to learning, thus allowing every learner to connect to the topic.

4. Make PowerPoint custom animations 

PowerPoint custom animations allow teachers to add more value and interactivity to keep K-12 students focused and engaged. 

Designing an animation in PowerPoint along with multimedia elements such as text, sound and graphics, can be an excellent way to add interest and excitement for K-12 students learning a particular concept. Such visual interaction would also encourage more participation from students.

Although there are multiple ways to design an animation slide for different content, a well-designed animation slide should include a title, specific information on the topic, animation to reinforce the concept, along with a hyperlink to any other additional information.

5. Use animation to make visualizations easy

When it comes to K-12 learning, there are several topics that are difficult to understand and require more focused teaching efforts to provide the necessary clarity to students. 

Learning videos with 3D animation can be used to offer detailed information and explanation about such content /topics. Blending various multimedia components such as video, audio, images, and texts, teachers can make the concepts much easier to understand. This helps students with varying IQ levels to grasp the topics with ease.

Multimedia presentations also help students gain a conceptual understanding of a topic in visual form, thus keeping them engaged and allowing their imagination to be broadened further.