However, at present GoAnimate is still in its infancy as a tool for educators (or so it seems to me). It suffers some serious shortcomings. One of those is the apparent lack of an online guide explaining its intricacies. Yes, I know that much of the learning of GoAnimate must be done by trial and error experimentation. Nonetheless, I was very disappointed by the lack of documentation. There were tutorials available, and I viewed and took notes on three of them. I viewed four or five Utube videos as well. Yet it seemed to me that a lot of straightforward explanation could be given by the creators of GoAnimate to ease the life and flatten the learning curve of animator novices such as myself.
Perhaps I am being unfair---I was raised long before personal computers and simply did not grow up, Ipod in hand, as my daughter is doing now. It may be that the creators of GoAnimate honestly believe that they can presume much more electronic sophistication than I and many others possess. Or perhaps they really believe that their product is so intuitively obvious that they don’t need to provide documentation to nonetheless attract a large body of users and make a return on their investment.
All of which brings me to a second shortcoming. This is the fact that attempts to create actual educational animations after using the available tutorials are bound to lead to much frustration, unless one gives in and buys the Plus version from the beginning. Unfortunately, the web site provides relatively little information about making the animations or the rules under which the animations operate. A full list would be greatly appreciated, and would include explicit statements about the two minute limit, and a host of other issues. (To give an example: is it possible to readily copy the style of an animation into another animation, so that one can make a part 1 and a part 2? Or does one have to create a part 1, then start a new video and go through the whole process of remembering and re-creating all of the settings?)
Because the website does not provide such information in a straightforward fashion, there is a tendency to look at the limited information comparing the Basic and Plus versions, and wonder just how trustworthy this company is. Will creation of animations really get any easier by buying Plus? Will more information be forthcoming after buying Plus?
Many educational users are liable to balk and use the free version, get frustrated, and then seek out other options. Presumably there are other options for animation, or for simulation out there.
I decided it was worth getting Plus for three months to give it a real try. I was able to create a much better animation than I thought I would be able to create on a first try. Yes, it has a lot of rough spots, and I have much to learn. For this assignment, there is a real balance to be made among the constraints: the urge to be creative, the urge to try out the multiplicity of possibilities, the urge to keep it short, the urge to cover the science in an interesting way, the urge to not be perfectionistic, and the realization that figuring out how it all really works is far beyond the limited time available, especially given the limited documentation provided.
Final comments: I would certainly encourage secondary students to learn and use GoAnimate, or other animation programs, especially if better documentation were available. I would use it to introduce concepts, create interest, break up lessons into manageable chunks, summarize previous instruction, etc. But first I would have to become a competent practioner of animation.
*For those interested: an example research-based rubric assessing the incorporation of technology into science presentations is given by Mott et al., 2011, Assessing student scientific expression using media: the media-enhanced science presentation rubric (MESPR), Journal of STEM Education, vol. 12, p. 33-41.
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