Using mobile phone cameras to capture images for slowmations: Student-generated science animations

A common phenomenon in many countries is that science is often poorly taught or not taught at all in primary school classrooms. ‘Slowmation’ is a new yet simplified form of stop-motion animation that encourages school or university students to create their own animations of science concepts. Even though this process of creating an animation is relatively simple, there is still a need for teachers and students to have access to basic equipment such as a digital still camera, a tripod and a computer with relevant software. This chapter presents a study of a group of preservice primary teachers who guided their school classes in creating slowmations of science concepts using the camera in mobile phones to capture the images. Using a mobile phone camera improves the accessibility to a camera, but the quality of photos taken by mobile phone cameras needs to be improved to make it a worthwhile use of the technology for creating animations.