ND Curriculum Initiative

Subject & Standards

3. Students engage in the writing process.: 5. Concepts of Geography:

Equipment/Materials Needed

http://www.mywebspiration.com/, http://www.goanimate.com/

Understandings & Goals

Through conceptual thinking and organizing, students will communicate facts about another state/province through storytelling with fictional characters.

Questions Answered

Students will understand the structure of an adventure/short story (word choice).
Students will incorporate research of nonfiction material into story form.
Students will become familiar with the elements of fiction: setting, character, plot structure, conflict, and point of view.
Students will work in small groups to collaborate on writing their own adventure stories.
Students will understand organizing with graphic organizers and publishing.

Procedures

You must first sign up for an account with Go Animate. (If all students have their sendit account this step can be finished in less than 5 minues)
1.  Go to http://goanimate.com/
2.  Click on “Sign up” at the top of the page
3.  Enter your sendit email address in space number 1
4.  Please enter your first name and your last initial for your nickname (Example Emily Jones would enter emilyj) in space 2
5.  Put in a password that you will remember in space 3 and 4
6.  Click the box that says you agree to the terms of use
7.  Go Animate will send you an email. You will need to open your sendit account to open the email and click on the hyperlink.

To create an animation (This is the bulk of the assignment, the students had three 90 minutes periods to finish this step)

1.  Sign into your account (at the top of the page)
2.  Click on “Create”
3.  Select “Go!Animate”
4.  Go to the top left corner of the page and select the theme that you want (Cartoon classic might be the easiest to use)
5.  The first four tabs at the top of the page (character, dialog bubbles, backgrounds, and props) will be the main tabs that you will use
6.  Select the background that you want for the first scene.
7.  Pick the character that you want to have be the star of your story
8.  When you put the character on the page you can flip the image (the first symbol), make it bigger, or rotate it (the green dot)
9.  If you click on the image again you can select action or movement. If you select movement (like walk) you have to drag the character to the new part of the screen.
10.  Add a dialog bubble to the scene and type in what the character is saying. Remember, the scenes go by fast so you don’t what too many words in the bubble (less than 10 words)
11.  When you are done with that scene you click on the plus sign at the bottom of the page.
12.  Create all of your scenes before you go onto the next steps.

Finishing steps (This took less than 5 minutes)

1.  Click on each of the numbered scenes at the bottom of the page.
2.  Click on “duration” and select four seconds (do this for all of the slides)
3.  You can now add music
4.  Click on the musical notes tab at the top of the page.
5.  Select the music that you want for your show.
6.  If you want to change the music or have it for only a few slides you can click on the music title (under the numbered slides) and change its settings
7.  You can also add sounds effects if you want.
8.  Have fun and play around with your animate and be creative.
9.  To view what your animate will look like you can click on preview (near the top of the page)
10.  When you are happy with your animation click save (top right of the screen)
11.  Enter a title that you pick for your tab please enter “Adventure Story”
12.  Click on “save and share”
13.  In the personal message please write the group member names (first and last names)
14.  Press Send

If you need to save your animation before you finish it (The first time the students had trouble with this step and it took each group about 10 minutes to figure it out, the second and third time it took less than five minutes per group)

1.  Click save at the top right corner
2.  Click on “save only” (you will need to title the project)
3.  The next day go to your account and play the animation
4.  After the animation is done playing click on the create button
5.  Click on the “copy and edit” button.
6.  You can now finish your animation.