Slowmation: Activating Mobile Sites of Visual Literacy in Education Research

• In Event: Sites Unseen: Reimagining Literacy Sites for Just and Equitable Futures

Abstract

This paper focuses on the use of Slowmation with children (ages 7-8) in an elementary public school. Slowmation is a teaching and learning tool that fosters visual literacy (Witherspoon et al., 2004). The process involves taking digital still images of objects as they move manually (Hoban et al. 2017). Introduced in the 1900s, slowmation and/or claymation became notable due to movies such as Gumby (1995) (Hoban et al., 2017). Gumby, the character, was made out of clay. He was manually moved across a digital screen to simulate movement. At each movement and/or step, a photo was taken. The images were then stitched together to create the movie, Gumby. Slowmation is thus a pedagogical tool that is used to create a digital short film (1-2 min videos) through the use of editing software and/or an app (i.e., application) that edits/stitches still images together.

I bring the process of Slowmation into conversation with new materialist theories (Alaimo, 2016; Barad 2007; Braidotti, 2013; Haraway, 2016; Manning, 2016; Tsing, 2015), and the post-structuralist theories of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in order to rethink ethnographic articulations of ‘the (research) site’ in education research. Borrowing Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘encounter,’ I conceptualize ‘the site’ as that which affects and provokes bodies to think. Echoing Deleuze (1994), “[s]omething in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter” (p. 139). I rethink ‘the site’ as an affective site of literacy that produces qualities of learning that cannot be bound to place. I, therefore, argue that the process of slowmation activates mobile sites of literacy that story past, present, and future knowledges that co-shape place.

Using slowmation, students created seamless short films that animated their understanding of content knowledge. For example, in small groups, after reading a chapter from a book of their choice, students analyzed what they read and demonstrated an understanding of content knowledge through creating a short digital film. The film reflected their understanding of concepts and ideas encountered in their books. Prior to creating the short films, students were provided with graphic organizers and/or storyboards to collectively plot the details of their movie. Students were provided with modelling clay, artistic materials and tools to use for the creation of characters and moviescape. Upon completion of their figures/characters, movie backdrop, and additional props, students used an app (i.e., Stop-Motion) to take pictures. Creating and then taking pictures of each scene in their movie, students documented and performed their collective stories.

Slowmation is an innovative tool that fosters student-led learning, creativity, and imagination. It gives students the opportunity to create and share their stories digitally, but also creatively. The educational value of Slowmation includes its ability to encourage visual literacy as well as foster collective thinking. Importantly, Slowmation encourages spontaneous moments of learning, which activate mobile territories of literacy that are made and re/made, and thus cannot be bound to place.

Author

• Nikki Rotas, University of Western Ontario