Mars Area teacher uses stop-motion to teach STEAM skills
Students at Mars Area Centennial School have the chance to become miniature filmmakers using stop-motion Stikbot kits purchased through a Donors Choose grant.
The kits are made up of small poseable figurines that can be used with stop-motion filming apps such as Stop Motion Studio to teach animation, STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Mathematics) teacher and library/media specialist Chris Churilla said.
“We were looking for something to enhance our stop-motion, and in the past we've used clay, which is pretty consumable,” Churilla said. “(The students) loved them, and some kids had seen or used (Stikbots) before. The second I pulled them out and introduced them, they were so excited to dive in with it. Just showing them brought the excitement level up 10 times, which was great.”
The kits cost a total of about $200 and were purchased through the program, educators individually write grants and post them online, and donors or organizations can contribute to fund their projects.“This is the first time I have ever used it,” Churilla said. “You write a grant, explain your project, and you post it online, and then other organizations can search for 'STEM-related grants.' They can contribute to the project on there and once the project is fully funded, we can receive it.”Churilla's grant proposal, which was funded by Oct. 30 of this year, detailed the potential uses for the Stikbots: Students “will be creating stop-motion animation videos using Stikbots to recreate scenes from books that they've read or stories that they've written,” according to the online proposal.“Stikbots allow students to manipulate figures in order to create videos of their written (or read) work using innovative STEAM skills,” Churilla wrote. “500 students in fifth and sixth grade will be able to use Stikbots in their library and STEAM classes.”Churilla put a link to the project's funding page on his Twitter and LinkedIn feeds, and received donations from across the community and beyond.“I got donations from people in Utah and North Carolina, and I did have two Mars parents who had seen it who donated as well,” he said. “People were able to donate $20 here, $20 there. I even had someone who donated $3. The funds really came from all over.”Churilla's goal was to attract donations from outside of Mars, and started with a smaller project to begin.“My goal — because this was my first time using it — was to try and get donations from outside our community,” he said. “We often get donations from within the community, we have a really strong PTO (parent-teacher organization), and I've gotten grants from the Mars Planet Foundation. I figured this would be something easy just to test it out, and it really worked out well.”He hopes to continue using Donors Choose to fund projects in the future.“I definitely will use it for future projects,” he said. “It was a great process, and I know other teachers at Mars have used it as well.”
When Mars Area School District's STEAM curriculum was written several years ago, Churilla said, stop-motion animation was included as part of the program.“Stop-motion animation is a part of bringing that art into STEAM,” he said. “That's something that differentiates us from other STEM programs. The animation part of it is some of that visual arts we are able to tie in.”The STEAM program works to prepare students for the future, Churilla said.“Some of them might be creating animations like this. We want to take that to the next level,” he said. “I actually have several current fifth-graders who want to be animators, and they do animations on their own outside of school, which is amazing. Being able to bring that in and to learn a little bit more enhances their excitement and their learning.”Churilla's fifth-grade students were the first to use the Stikbots in November, and sixth-graders will work on a project with them later in December.“Since we had never gotten them before, this was a chance for me to review and teach those STEAM skills of what makes a good quality animation,” Churilla said. “This was kind of like their intro. This was their first time to figure out how they work.”
