CultusInterview with Darko Taleski, Primary school teacher of art education
1. When did you begin creating interactive educational video content?
Four years ago when most of the schools, where I was working as an art education teacher, were provided with computer equipment (following the Ministry of education project – Computer for each child). Following this process, there was a need of introducing this technology, as well as integrating it with the art education lectures.
In this period, and even now, there is not a lot of electronic educational content in Macedonian language. Four years ago I come up with the idea, together with the art education pupils to create content in an electronic format, that will be beneficial for the lecturing, both to my pupils and for wider lecturing purposes in the country.
This is actually the time when we started working with the stop motion animations, the content creation that supports art education.
Together with the pupils we have created animations for the art elements and art principles, we have posted them on YouTube, and we are sharing them through the web page on wikispace. It is important to emphasize that the pupils participate in the content creation, as well.
Further on, out from all gathered material we have prepared a project, in which other teachers, from other school subjects have participated. The project was entitled Fun, education, stop motion animation. The grounds on this project, was the creation of stop motion animation for all subjects’ teachers from the primary school.
With this project we have represented Macedonia at the European Forum of Microsoft – Partners in education in 2012, where we have won the first place. The same year, we also won the second place at the World Forum of Microsoft – Partners in Education.
2. How are the new media assisting you in the every-day educational activities?
The creation of the stop motion animation is a process that lasts longer, but is an excellent manner of active learning, where the pupils are fully engaged. It begins from the part of looking for a particular content, collecting materials on the topic, selection, organization, creation of the story, book of recording, active recording of the animations, computer processing and finally presentation. Through the preparation process of the animation, the pupils gain skills various skills: mutual cooperation, utilization of the information creative techniques, developing critical thinking, learning outside the classroom and boosting of the creativity.
3. What are your plans for further development of the content that you are creating?
The success of the project with stop motion animation is to be introduced and used by a larger number of teachers in Macedonia, during their lecturing. All of them have voluntarily followed our tutorials on creating stop motion animation and together with their pupils have been creating their own animations.
The materials that were part of the project is complied in a manual of 80 pages, where the actual teaching of the educational content is fully explained. It was created for different school subjects in the primary school and was offered to the Directorate for education development, with an intention to be announced and distributed to all interested teachers, who are using the animation and who are stimulating the pupils to express in this manner, to participate at various competitions, to achieve results, and gain awards.
You can also see the updates on Darko’s work at FB-Fun education Stop motion animation or Darko Taleski