Using Slowmation to Engage Preservice Elementary Teachers in Understanding Science Content Knowledge

Slow motion animation ("slowmation") is a new teaching approach that uses asimple animation process to engage learners in creating their own comprehensiveanimations of science concepts. In this paper, preservice elementary teachersused slowmation, a form of stop-motion animation, to make models of scienceconcepts and take digital still photos as the models were manually manipulatedin the horizontal plane. A range of materials can be used, and the animations areplayed in slow motion at two frames per second. Importantly, the preserviceteachers provided pedagogical prompts, such as narration, diagrams, music, andfactual text in their animations to help explain concepts. Preservice elementaryteachers learned how to create slowmations in their science method course andthen made their own comprehensive examples in an assignment to represent ascience concept. Slowmation is a use of technology that generates a "real need"for preservice teachers to understand science content so that they can representand explain it accurately in their animation