3D animation and learning to read – the Shrek effect and other reasons to be optimistic

Why Choose Phonics?
Although here at FruitPhonics, we do not endorse any particular product or subscribe to any specific ’school of thought’, we believe that modern phonics based literacy tuition, sometimes called synthetic phonics, has consistently been shown to be by far the most effective route to early literacy for the majority of children.

iIn the case of slower learners and the socially disadvantaged, these methodologies have been shown to virtually eliminate intervention teaching. This is a particularly salient point for international children, learning English as a foreign language, who do not have the advantage of an English Language based cultural experience.

Why 3D animation?

What role can 3D animation have in educating young children? Why do we consider it to be so potentially powerful? Why should parents consider it to be an attractive option?

Over the past decade, 3D animation has emerged as a powerful entertainment medium for children and adults alike because it works on multiple levels. 3D animation has remarkable powers of emotional engagement. It’s the Shrek effect, or Monsters Inc, or Toy Story or any of the hugely popular 3D franchises that have emerged in recent years; and not just among children. They suspend disbelief and immerse themselves in the richness of the 3D worlds, the emotional depth of the characters and their narrative. The range of emotional expression made possible by 3D technology is remarkable and when fused with the visual spectacle and animation anarchy so familiar from the 2D form of the art, it is not so surprising that the result is so spectacularly engaging.

Our primary objective is to educate. This requires motivation and emotional engagement to promote retention (memory) and assimilation - information committed to memory and transformed into knowledge as a platform to higher level thinking skills. To achieve these objectives, high quality animation is a powerful tool, interactive 3D animation is even better.

Animation alone is insufficient, the content requires energy and music. It must work on an entertainment level. We are creating characters that are, essentially tutors and friends with whom learners can engage and ‘escape’. Fortunately 3D animation is well proven in this regard, especially when combined with effective sound design, particularly music, and occasional visual mayhem.

The use of 3D animation to engage and educate young minds has great appeal to young children, potentially enhancing levels of motivation and so progression. The key is to devise narratives that work within the limits of teaching needs. They can be used simply as learning reinforcing entertainment narratives or integrated into effective learning activities.

Phonics learning schemes can benefit from both modes of use. A bonus of the integration approach is that it is possible to combine entertaining 3D animation with interactive activities that reinforce phonics learning in ways that are well known to the parents of the games generation. This interactive mode of control is called kinesthetic learning forms, together with visual and auditory learning, the three dominant learning styles.

High quality 3D character animation integrated into phonics activities would motivate and engage children while being naturally adaptive to their preferred learning style. It is a combination that could be very effective indeed, an effect that even make an ogre like Shrek, or Mikey and Sulley, and all of the other denizens of the 3D universe, very proud.

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