Animated Drawings

Meta Demo Labs

With Ohio State Testing in full swing, it may be time for your students to let their creativity go wild.  Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has just the thing with Demo Labs.  Meta Demo Labs brings drawings to life with AI (have you noticed a theme in the last few months?)

To begin, allow your students (or yourself!) to draw an original character to be animated by the program's AI.  It helps to make sure that the arms and legs aren't bent, nor that they cross over any portion of the main body.  Below you'll see the character that I drew for this blog... (as you can see, I was a teacher of history, not art.)

After you upload your image, it will ask you about helping the research team by providing access to the uploaded image. Beyond which, the program will ask you to drag the edges of a box so that your character is completely within the frame.  (as seen below)

The next step will be to separate your character from the background.  As seen in the image below, your character should be highlighted while portions of the image that do not belong to your character should be greyed out.

The final step before the 'magic,' finding the joints of your character.  At this point, you'll simply need to drag the dots to the corresponding joints of your character.  It's a pretty straightforward process and in most cases, doesn't actually require any adjusting.  When everything looks good, go ahead and hit that navy 'Next' button to see all the animating goodness!

Hopefully, after the AI does it's thing, your creation is ready for animation. There are 32 animations in all.

It can box...

It can dance...

Well you get the point!  It may be a bit of a gimmick, but it's the light-hearted sort of outlet your students might just need at this point in the school year.  You might even get a kick out of it yourself! 

Useful Links:

Meta Demo Lab

Earth Day

 

    Do you want a great virtual interactive activity for Earth Day?!

    Try a ThingLink Virtual 360 Field Trip. ThingLink has multiple 360 field trips. There are a few that will support Earth Day activities. The field trips will show you an environment in the area and give interactive buttons with videos or articles that will teach the scholars something new about the topic. 

Erintegration has multiple ways you can incorporate technology on Earth Day. They completed a list of 3 of the virtual field trips to incorporate on Earth Day. 

• Learn About Trees explains different types of trees and the parts of one. This virtual field trip pairs nicely with Tell Me, Tree by Gail Gibbons or Tree, Leaves, and Bark by Diane Burns.
• My Interactive Beehive lets the scholars see inside a beehive and understand the different parts. It pairs nicely with the read-aloud The Bee Book by Charlotte Miller. You could also find facts about bees on National Geographic for Kids. 
• The Wetlands Restoration is a virtual field trip that walks you through the wetlands and gives you detailed information on them. It pairs well with the read-aloud Who Loves Here:Wetland Animals. Then have the scholar visit this wetland mapper to view where the wetlands are in the world.