Blog 6 - Effects of animated and interactive videos and related tools "Animaker" & "Edpuzzle".

   In the traditional education system, teachers have tried to teach their students through textbooks and verbal instructions. However, the teaching and learning methods could be changed for the development of information and Communication Technology. It is time to adapt students to an interactive learning system so that they can improve their learning, assimilation, and memorization skills. It is essential to create a quality and realistic learning environment for students. (Islam et al., 2014)

Animaker 

  

  Animaker is a user-friendly, easily accessible animation tool that instructors can use to create videos for lessons. It provides different backgrounds, tools, and characters even in the free version. A study was conducted in Dhaka city to investigate the effects of using visuals on primary school learners. Islam et al. found that eleven students gave 6-10 correct answers by learning traditionally by their teacher. On the other hand, 14 students gave more than 5 correct answers by seeing interactive learning materials once only. However, the important result was that when students taught using a blending system, maximum students gave 11-15 correct answers that are really high compared to other teaching methods. 

Edpuzzle 

   Providing lots of videos and the feature of editing them, adding questions in between the videos, Edpuzzle is another effective web tool. It's easy to use and freely accessible. Instructors can edit existing videos and add related questions in the video. This idea is really effective, especially in online lessons. Interactive videos are significant to follow Mayer's Segmenting Principle. Moreover, interaction with the material directly in the middle of the learning process is important for especially young learners.

Reference

 Islam, Baharul, Ahmed, Arif, Islam, Kabirul, and Shamsuddin, Abu Kalam. (2014). Child Education Through Animation: An Experimental Study. International Journal of Computer Graphics & Animation (IJCGA) Vol.4, No.4, October 2014