Puppet Pals Animations

It has been an exciting start to the year returning to a teaching role focused on innovation. This term I have the privilege of working with Years 1-4 on ICT integration, assisting teachers with finding powerful apps, websites and software that facilitate deep learning. When planning lessons I am seeking to use technology for significant task redesign. Dr Reuben Puentedura’s SAMR model is an excellent tool to ensure thoughtful use of technology for teaching and learning. To learn more see my post Using SAMR Model for ICT Integration’.

This week I worked with Year 1 students to create animations using Puppet Pals. The students have been learning about the past to the present by exploring the history of technology in the home. The focus for their animation was the history of washing. To begin with students watched a short video entitled Washing Clothes in the Olden Days. They then created a digital poster using Pic Collage to summarise the history of washing. Students added 4-6 images and put them in sequence leaving the middle of the screen free for their puppet animation.

The poster was then exported to the camera roll and rotated to landscape. The image was added to Puppet Pals using the photo background option. They then selected one character to use in their animation to explain the history of washing.

Puppet Pals is an engaging and fun learning tool. It is also an opportunity for significant task redesign using technology. Firstly it provides the forum for younger students to share their knowledge without writing. This is a much better assessment tool in History where we are seeking to understand their ability to think like a historian or knowledge of a topic, rather than writing ability. Secondly the videos can be shared with an online audience, providing a sense of purpose for the task. My Year 1 students shared their videos using their digital portfolios on Seesaw. I also selected some videos to share on YouTube. Thirdly the animations required higher order thinking and complex cognitive processing. During the lesson students had to source images, arrange them in sequence, use a number of export tools and then annotate the images through animation.

Here are 5 tips when using Puppet Pals with students in order to create high quality animations.

1. Practise: Students must practise before recording. It is a good idea to close iPads whilst rehearsing to avoid distraction. Providing a script scaffold can be a useful tool for younger students.
2. Background: To customise the background tap ‘Play’ then choose a setting. Tap on ‘Photos’  chose a photo from the camera roll. Customising the background provides great scope and flexibility for an animation because students can use a photo of a learning task, an image from the internet or a poster created in another app such as Pic Collage.
3. Recording: To record tap on the red circle in the top right hand corner. Students should only say one sentence at a time and then tap on the pause icon to stop and think about the next sentence. To finish or to restart the recording tap on the stop icon the top right hand corner. It can be advantageous to set an approximate time limit, for example the full animation should be no longer than one minute.
4. Title: The title of each animation should include the student’s class and name so it is easy to identify the author of each video on shared devices.
5. Export: Tap on the globe in the top left hand corner to return to the main menu. Tap on ‘Saved’ and choose the export icon. If saving to the camera role it is a good idea to select the higher resolution ‘Best – Big file size’.