Animations for Teaching

Animations | Simple PowerPoint Animation | License & Source Code | LabMedicine Paper

neuron

The following animations illustrate basic concepts in psychology and neuroscience. These animations require the Adobe Flash Player, which is available as a free download.

Neuroscience

Sensation - Perception

gestalt form perception

Lecture Animations

These animations were designed to supplement lectures. They provide dynamic illustrations of particular phenomena, which will hopefully make teaching certain topics easier.

Simple Animation for PowerPoint

Simple animation effects can be created in PowerPoint and OpenOffice Impress by using automatic slide transitions. A series of slides can be created to show the desired sequence of images. The transition between these slides can be set to automatic, one second transitions. This will give the feeling of movement to the audience. The only drawback is that the movement will seem jerky due to a one frame per second transition.

Please note that animation in PowerPoint typically refers to swooping bullets and slide transitions. The animation described here is aimed at something more practical that illustrates the speaker's main points.

The following files are a brief tutorial with an example: Simple Animation (.odp; OpenOffice Impress format), Simple Animation (.ppt; Microsoft PowerPoint format)

Using and Licensing These Animations

Creative Commons License The animations and source code are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. In short, you are allowed to use these animations and/or the source code in your courses and web pages, but an attribution must be made to Gary Fisk and this web site.

Download all of the above Flash animations in one .zip file.

Download the Flash source code (.zip format) for all of the above animations. These were created in an older version of Macromedia Flash, around about 2001 to 2004. Please note that I am no longer creating my own animations due to a lack of time. I cannot help you directly with your coding projects, but maybe these files will be useful to you in some way.

Paper on Animations in Education

Cover Story

The following paper is an invited review of animations for the journal LabMedicine (from the American Society for Clinical Pathology). The uses of animations in crime scene investigations and as a teaching tool are covered. The educational part covers the advantages and disadvantages of using animations in educational settings.

Fisk, G.D. (2008). Using animation in forensic pathology and science education. LabMedicine, 39(10), 587-592.

Key findings:

Please note that this paper is not covered under the Creative Commons license. LabMedicine owns all copyright on this paper.


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