Motion capture suits are used to make animations come alive with lifelike movements at places like Disney and Pixar — and now at Seneca Valley.

Seneca Valley High School students are some of the first in the country to use this technology in a new pilot program this school year. The course is called Honors Motion Capture and Animation 1 and is giving students skills to get jobs in various industries.

The course comes thanks to the district's partnership with the Situated Multimedia Accelerated Learning Lab, or SMALLab for short. SMALLab is an educational company that sells a room-sized interactive environment that integrates motion-capture technology and an immersive floor projection.

Connoquenessing Valley Elementary School became home to the school district's first SMALLab in 2014, where students use it as an additional tool in their learning.

At the secondary level, a former computer lab in the intermediate high school houses the SMALLab equipment. In the room, 12 infrared cameras surround a mat on the floor that's about the size of a boxing ring. The cameras pick up the sensors on the motion capture suit or on a wand with sensors on it.

The cameras then transmit information from the sensors to computer software that projects an image onto the floor. Students can then interact with the images.