Animation

OK so the first time I tried to animate, I almost cried. I also discovered that I have NO imagination what so ever!!! I was watching the tutorials and it was not going well. I put it away for the day. I opened it up the next day, finished watching the tutorials and...done! It was so not as bad as I thought the day before. So being the genius that I am, I didn't read the instructions about what the animation needed to be about. So I animated a race between a chicken and kangaroo that was led by a rabbit. I finished it and...if I may say so....it looks good. Too bad no one will see it or grade it for that matter. So again....at the computer for the animation that is now for educational purpose. I finally decided that I would do one to introduce some vocabulary for a unit on ecology. So now it is done. The only thing that I would improve on about the software that I used is that it needs more sounds. I'm sure I could have imported them from somewhere, but that is a whole other lesson!
What I did like about Alice was that it was very straight forward. Once you watched the tutorials, you can catch on to things. After a while I actually got into it. I wanted to make the rabbit move his tail only or make rabbit sounds, but I never figured out how to move only the tail and there were not any rabbit sounds. I wanted to make the saliva out of the wolf's mouth drip, but I was unable to do that either. I wish this wasn't a 30 day free trial, because I could use this in class alot. I could have students animate and then write stories for each creation. I could have them then write stories for other's creations. They could also animate using all vocabulary words in a unit as they tell a story. It has great potential. The students would love it because it allows them to be creative. All in all, I learned that if I lose my patience, to leave it alone for a while, and I learned how to animate for my classes.