Instructional Animation made EASY

Ever tried your hand at animation? Why use animation as opposed to video? Judging from my experience in this area I would say that producing a video is way more expensive and cumbersome than animation. Think about it for a minute...ok maybe two. A video very often require actors, a venue and perhaps a voice-over artist all of which might be pretty hard to come by if you are not already well connected in the field and requires a nice budget if it's a service that is not freely on offer at your institution. Enter Animation!

When I first heard about animation it was something I thought of as only highly trained professionals would need to produce and one basically needed access to hi-end production software. Thankfully these days it is way more accessible as technology has spawned plenty of free software to choose from for both MAC and PC platforms. I am still experimenting so the video above is my first try with this particular software and only allows 5 min productions from the free version. You require an upgrade for longer productions. I find that these animations might be pretty useful to explain procedures or practicals without the hassles of perhaps having to set up an experiment. It might even be useful for students to demonstrate their understanding of setting up a scientific experiment at their desk so to speak. And there is no money attached. I am thinking of using it for a range of short instructional videos that I can use for training and the 5 minute time limit is actually useful to force me to think carefully about what I need to say. The interface is a little like Powerpoint so there is an immediate familiarity about the interface even though I must admit that it takes some getting used to. However, the available templates provides one with a good base to start from. Let your imagination run wild with this one and most importantly have fun and see what the impact might be on your students or end-users.