July 15, 2005

Carolyn Clark Elementary School

Low tech meets high tech in claymation class

By Ken Lotich
Times Intern

Most people don’t think of clay as a high-tech learning tool. Yet combine clay with digital cameras and computer software and you may change your mind.

Bianca Garcia and Komal Sharma work on their story boards, which had to be completed before any clay animal building could begin.

After using digital cameras to take still images of their clay figures, Christina Koral and Maitree Mervana work together editing their clay animation film, “The Animals Get Their Rock On” using Apple’s iPhoto and a program called Video Blender from Tech4Learning Inc. to create their movies.

Clay found its way into Carolyn Clark Elementary School this past spring when Bernadette Marcias, a fifth grade teacher, offered her first “claymation” class.

Claymation is the act of creating clay figures and then animating them on a computer.

Marcias, who volunteered her time after school to offer the course, said she limited it to 25 students. To her surprise, the class filled up in one day. The course was offered once a week to fourth, fifth and sixth graders.

Marcias’ said her student teacher, Megan Freeman, got her involved in CAL-MOD, a program at San Jose State University that has student teachers and their master teacher work together to implement a technology unit within the classroom.

At the end of the project, both the student teacher and master teacher get a stipend. The teacher also gets an additional $1,000 equipment stipend to use in his or her classroom.

Marcias purchased a digital camera, some software and an electronic music keyboard for students to use with her stipend.

She thought about creating the claymation course after attending a Computer-Users Educators conference. She said she went on the Web site to see its participating vendors, where she found Tech4Learning.com, which offered claymation software.

Marcias did additional research on claymation, read books and watched videos on the subject, which she said helped in teaching the students. As her students wound up a unit on mammals, she decided it was a good time to make the transition to claymation.

She divided the students into groups of five or six, and within the group they decided amongst themselves who was in charge of story boarding, editing, photography, set design and character creation.

Anita Lopez and Eric Cordova work together to create gorillas for their clay animation project on mammals.

Matthew Do and Justin Giang paint a backdrop for their movie.

After divvying up the tasks, the students dove into their project. They created their animals and used digital cameras to take still images of their clay figures. Then, using Apple’s iPhoto and a program called Video Blender from Tech4Learning Inc., they created their movies.

Marcias said she was talking about claymation to a parent who didn’t have a child in her class, when the parent suggested she offer the course to other students. Marcias agreed, and Principal Jeff Smith gave her the green light to do the class.

Although the claymation experience was interesting, there were some obstacles along the way, Marcias said.

One challenge they faced was that Marcias only had three digital cameras for the students to use. Inevitably, some groups had to wait before they could take photos.

“Clay animation was a fun experience, but it was also educational,” said Eric Cordova, a student in Marcias’ claymation class. “Making the animals was fun, (and) making the movie was educational.”

Kunal Shalia, a fifth grader, said working in groups helped the process of creating the animated clay.

“Clay animation was hard and easy. … Some of the hard parts were making the script, making the clay figures and the setting. We had to work as a team to do it because it was not easy,” Shalia said.

Despite some of the challenges, the end results turned out successful for many of the students.

“What I liked about clay animation was to see everyone happy,” said Davin Tang. “And that people worked together.”