How Can Using an Animation Maker Help Education?

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Capturing (and keeping!) the attention of students is often among the most challenging tasks facing an educator. Anyone who’s had the “pleasure” of standing in front of kids who aren’t exactly keen on the idea of focusing on a lesson knows this.

Some teachers resort to easy fixes. They may simply put on a video, knowing that doing so may be easier than truly striving to engage a classroom.

However, it’s also possible to go too far in the opposite direction. Some educators object so greatly to the idea of using visuals to complement their lessons that they deprive themselves of the opportunity to make a class more interactive.

The strongest educators are often those who leverage the best tools to improve education outcomes in both the short term and the long term. For instance, if you’re a teacher, an animation maker is a tool you could use to turn mere students into learners.

Animation isn’t merely a distraction. When a teacher uses it properly, it can add genuine value to their lessons. The following points explain how.

Animation in the Classroom: How Does Animation Help Education?

Boosting Retention

It’s important for teachers to remember that it isn’t merely enough to boost the focus of students while class is in session. Even if a student is reasonably paying attention when an instructor teaches, a lesson may nevertheless have minimal educational value if the student doesn’t retain what’s taught.

This highlights one of the key strengths of animation-based learning. Research indicates that video content in general tends to boost retention and engagement among students in a classroom. Because animation is particularly dynamic (and because an animation maker lets a teacher customize their video lessons), its impact on retention may be even greater.

Illustrating Complex Ideas

Don’t assume educational animation is only useful as a means of getting rowdy little pre-adolescents to sit still for a lesson! Research indicates that animation-based educational content can also serve genuine purposes at higher levels.

For example, according to one study comparing the effectiveness of animated content vs. static graphic figures in regard to teaching students about a complex biological process, animated educational videos yield higher levels of retention.

Keep this in mind if you’re a high school teacher or university professor. If your role often involves teaching about ideas or principles that you tend to find difficult to convey, with a user-friendly animated video maker, you could theoretically create content that will simplify what might otherwise be intimidating lessons.

Catering to Different Learning Styles

Not all students learn the same way. This can pose a significant challenge for an educator. A teacher needs to do their best to appeal to all learning styles without wasting time modifying a lesson plan for each individual student.

This is another reason an animated video could be a useful element of a lesson. For students who are visual learners, animated content may help them better digest the subject matter they might have otherwise struggled with during a lecture.

Allowing Students to Learn by Teaching

One of the most effective ways to ensure students absorb and retain the material being taught in a given class is to have the students teach said material themselves. If a class project involves developing presentations on different subjects that students must learn and delivering those presentations to their fellow classmates, students will engage more with those subjects.

Or, well, that’s the idea. Of course, plenty of educators know that tasking students with creating thorough presentations on important class material isn’t a guarantee that students will actually devote the proper amount of attention to such a project.

Luckily, there are ways to easily boost student interest in these types of assignments. A student who has little interest in working on a traditional presentation might nevertheless enjoy creating an animation video to share with the class.

Keep in mind that an animation maker isn’t just a tool for a teacher to use. The right video maker can also be a great tool for students, allowing them to engage more directly with their class materials by generating fun and stimulating lessons.

Facilitating eLearning

Elearning has become increasingly popular in recent years. Sometimes, this is due to necessity. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many schools had to adopt e-learning models to ensure social distancing. However, e-learning services had already been popular as a means of providing remote lessons to anyone with an interest in digging into various topics online.

That said, online learning does come with its own share of limitations. Because a student isn’t in a classroom with a teacher, there is naturally a sense of distance that can prevent a lesson from feeling as interactive as it might in person.

Animation helps compensate for such limitations. Through computer animation, a teacher can deliver online lessons that stand out.

An eLearning service could also use animation to establish its unique brand. By experimenting with different animation styles, those in charge of developing educational video content for an online learning platform could identify a style that represents their unique branded identity.

Powtoon Offers the Ideal Animation Maker for Educators

How does animation help education? As this overview demonstrates, creating your own animation can improve your effectiveness as a teacher in many ways. This is particularly true when you consider the fact that this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Maybe you’re a teacher who genuinely appreciates the potential value that animated content can add to your class. However, you might be reluctant to embrace such content because you don’t believe you have the skills, time, money, or general resources necessary to create and upload strong animated content.

That’s where Powtoon comes in. This intuitive online animation maker combines a simple drag-and-drop interface with templates and other simple features to ensure that creating video animation is an easy task for everyone from seasoned pros to beginners. It’s also worth noting that this tool allows you to generate easy live-action content as well. To find out more about what it can do for you, sign up for free today!

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Hanna Abitbul

Hanna is Powtoon's Content Marketing Strategist. She joined Powtoon as a copywriter in 2019, after graduating from university with a specialized degree in marketing and business. She continues to inspire people to create incredible video content with blog posts, videos, guides, and more. Hanna's passions include reading, singing, and caring for animals (#proudvegan). Nothing makes her happier than waking up to her two black kitties who, contrary to popular belief, are good luck!