How can animation transform learning in the classroom?

Educational animation has been known for a while as a supportive tool in teaching. Maybe it’s not your first time hearing about using animation at school but do you know does animation actually works? In other words, have you gotten a clue about how it can transform in-class learning?  Thus, this article is to help you have a clear and valid insight into the power of animation in the classroom.

The process of learning

To better understand the power of animation in the classroom, it’s necessary to first understand the process of learning.

Learning process is complicated, so sometimes people aren’t willing to do in-depth research on it. Nevertheless, don’t be worried, all you need to know about it has been summarised here: :

Concentrating ⟶ Understanding ⟶ Remembering

Concentrating is the first step in the learning process. 

The first step requires educators to attract students’ attention, and maintain it throughout the whole lesson.

Sometimes it isn’t too hard to attract students by, for example, playing a music video at the beginning of the lesson. But, the problem is, if you continue playing this video during the class, children can be distracted from learning. On the contrary, if you stop the music after the lesson has begun, students’ motivation and engagement for that lesson will automatically shut off. That’s why making students concentrate is the most challenging task for every teacher.

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» 4 Tips to Get Students Attention in Online Learning

Understanding is the vital step following concentrating.

After students stay focus on the lesson, it’s time to make them understand the actual key ideas of the lesson. Your students wouldn’t learn anything from the lesson if you don’t make it easy-to-understand. Therefore, for primary students, it is of prime importance that teachers make the lesson as easy to understand as possible.

Not only children but adults also struggle with understanding difficult topics. Depending on the age, we are met with different levels of difficulty. Thus, the challenge for teachers is to explain complex ideas in a way that students can understand. If not, students can’t get any valuable information from that class.

Remembering is the last and also the most valuable step in learning.

What if students can’t remember any knowledge after a lesson? How terrible it is if they forget everything and then come to the class with an “empty mind”. As a result, teachers would have to teach the same information again and again.

So, it is particularly true to say that remembering could be the key to evaluate the effectiveness of a lesson, a teaching method, and even a teacher’s ability. Moreover, better remembering the first time can support recalling of that knowledge in the future.

To sum up, each of the three steps above has a vital role in students’ learning journey. They all go hand in hand and affect each other. However, concentrating is considered to be the most crucial yet challenging step for better learning. That’s because it’s the first step that sets the foundation for the ones after in the learning process.

How animation can boost the learning process

By now you have probably understood the process which students learn. In this part, we will show you the power of animation in the classroom through its impact on the 3 steps of the learning process.

1. Benefit visual learners to attract and engage students

When 65% of the world’s population are visual learners, animation becomes pretty beneficial for children’s learning. It’s is also more valuable to use animation in teaching because 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. By providing attractive visual through animated characters and graphic details, animations attract and engage learners into the lesson. No academic reading theory needed, children learn by watching fun but educational animated videos. We’re sure you can tell which one is more comfortable and interesting.

Moreover, it is a fact that no student belongs to only one learning style. Thus, most students enjoy animated videos because they combine visuals with sound and movement rather than just plain images.

Read more:
Animation in primary education: How does it work?

2. Keep students concentrated through storytelling

Storytelling is the most outstanding feature of animation in the educational scenario. The art of storytelling makes every second of an animated video worthwhile.  

In teaching, storytelling allows teachers to tell a story of knowledge engagingly. Imagine that you are learning through listening to a story. For sure, because you want to hear the end of the story, you will try your best not to miss any word. The innovation of this method lies not only in the content but also in how it is presented.

This example demonstrates the typical role of storytelling in representing knowledge in an interesting way. It delivers knowledge about mindfulness & how to mediate depression that is usually difficult to teach kids.

So if you can take advantage of storytelling, you will get students to concentrate on learning without them even noticing! We believe that storytelling will make it hard for students to lose their interest and attention once they have engaged in the story.

3. Simplify knowledge for better understanding

Animation is now found so widely because many people believe that it can help learners come to understand complex ideas more easily.

Do you know why visualization is vital for students’ understanding? Because it can explain abstract concepts in the concrete form that children can see. Students need to watch things happen to understand it. That’s why every primary school in the world has at least one lab for students to see the real thing happen. Perhaps learners at this age are also better at understanding a concept through direct practice and experience.

For example, the simple question as “What is the difference between poison and venom?” can be difficult to explain in a textbook. And yes, you could find a common answer somewhere. But just try to explain it by animation, you will see that the answer can be so much more funny yet informative. Take a look at the gif below and you will yourself experience to find the answer.

4. Help store information for better remembering and recalling of knowledge

It’s evident that animation helps students to learn faster than traditional teaching aids. Especially, visuals not only make the concept clear but also help children memorize it for a longer time. Do you know that human has a perfect pictographic memory used especially to store visual information? Surely an image of a red square is always better remembered than the sentence “a plane figure with four equal straight sides and four right angles”’.

Specifically, when it comes to animation, the enigma is not only about remembering an image. It can be about memorizing a story that includes character, process, content and, thus, the lesson. Therefore, if you want to use the knowledge in the future, it is more accessible to recall visuals than text.

Animation effectively transform learning in the classroom

If you are reading this part, it means that you have now gained a genuine insight into how animation benefits students’ learning process in a class. This last part will show you the power of animation in transforming learning, expressed in 3 main points below:

• From academic lesson to fun and informative knowledge to grab

Animated videos are famous for their ability to bring fun into the lesson. Fun but informative. Fun but still keeping the educational value. Because learning is most effective when it’s fun. Through captivating and stimulating illustrations, animation fight the boredom of dry content or technical subjects. Fun elements in animation can be delivered through relatable animated characters, cheerful voice-over, or captivating storytelling.

However, pay attention to not overdo fun elements in animation if you don’t want to distract your students when learning.

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» How not to make educational animation a distraction in eLearning

• From complex to easy-to-understand lessons

In animation, complex concepts are made into digestible pieces through visualization. As we have repeated the power of visualization in simplifying content about a million times, you should probably believe us by now.

Or if you want to find out more about the benefits of visualization in explaining complicated things for the classroom, take a look at this article:
The power of visual in teaching and learning

• Bring learning to life

Visualization in animation gives students a chance to see and experience the topic if it couldn’t be practiced. Or sometimes animation can visualize the abstract or complicated process that is hard to see by normal eyes. Besides, the motion also helps things happen smooth and lively as in reality for a better understanding.

For example, this short animated video shows how salt dissolves then precipitates after being released into the water. Obviously, students couldn’t see the process happened in water even they do it in a lab. You see, visualization and movements give a great explanation for the teachers in this case.

Conclusion

Now we hope that you have equipped for yourself a fair amount of knowledge on how animation can be super effective in the classroom. However, all above are just pieces of very obvious advantages when using animation for in-class teaching. To further see animation in action, check out our previous work first. However, there is no better way than experiencing it yourself. So, contact us if you would like a free consultation for all matters related to educational animation.

Read further:

• How to make animation for educational purposes work
• How much does an educational animation cost per minute?