Geneemation is a new stop-motion animation program made exclusively for schools. It has been developed through primary school ICT Clubs and with the expert knowledge of a expert animator who has worked with Aardman. Geneemation software is visually stimulating and engaging for children of all ages. It is easy to use and enables children to work independently on their own stop-motion animation.

Educators have long understood that children love cartoons and the power of a well produced animation in getting a point across. Geneemation does this by adding a new dimension to Genee Vision visualisers to animate lessons and works to provide a tool for learning across all primary subjects and is an excellent resource for developing the creative curriculum. Animation is a multi-faceted form of art. You can create a story, create characters, make them from clay or plasticine, design and make sets, compose soundtracks or select appropriate recorded music to enhance a film. Geneemation allows children to solve problems, make decisions and judgements, assess and advance their projects and review and reflect on their learning. Geneemation is a powerful piece of software that demands all of these things from pupils as they have fun with their friends making a film, often not realising that they are in fact learning new skills, applying new theories and sharing fresh ideas. The layout of the user interface is bright, colourful and extremely easy to use. The large, noticeably labelled icons make navigation straightforward.

School ICT Consultant John Nelson comments, “The range of applications for this software is limited only by the imagination of the user. With the Genee Vision Visualiser and Geneemation Software I now have everything I need for children to create their own animation studio. Design, dance, art, cinematography, theatre, animation and music are all possible areas for teachers and pupils to explore with the Genee Vision Visualiser and Geneemation, additionally they can all cut across to other subjects in exciting ways.” Geneemation can be installed effortlessly in minutes and once loaded the software is intuitive with a comprehensive help menu that it is written in a child friendly language. Features offered by this software include the ability to play back your animation, a dynamically adjustable frame rate, allowing you to slow down your film if you have made it to fast. Onion skinning (overlay frames upon live video) ideal for identifying how much you’ve moved your characters or putting them back in place.

It also works with all school networks so you don’t have to go back to the same computer to continue working on your film. The import music and sounds and record narrations feature allows you to use an easy to use drag and drop interface to arrange multiple layers of music and sound effects to create your own audio visual masterpiece. Geneemation also allows you to add titles and credits so that users can insert titles and credits with many different and exciting styles and transitions. The video editing feature provides a ‘movie maker’ interface allowing for easy editing of your animations. Another fantastic feature is the export to AVI and WMV so you can turn your animation into a windows video file that can be shown on your interactive whiteboards, burnt onto DVD and even uploaded onto your website or the online gallery at www.interactive-education.co.uk/geneemation.

Overall, a simple to use, yet influential piece of software that pupils and teachers will be eager to use as it takes all the pressure out of the technical aspects of production, allowing them to concentrate on applying their artistic talents to the final product. No matter how advanced the pupils are at ICT, it is their composition and creative skills linked to their ability to converse information using a different medium which is being judged.