Simple Stop Motion Animation with Parapara

Earlier this week I read about Parapara Animation in a headline of Free Technology for Teachers.  I am always on the lookout for a quick and simple way to animate molecular motion, so I thought I would check it out.  Richard Byrne's post gives a great overview to the features of Parapara.  

I headed over to the Parapara site and clicked around a little.  After a few failed attempts where I figured out how things work, I was able to create a simple animation of 2 water molecules.  It looks like I should have used a different colored background, but, otherwise, I am pretty happy with my first attempt.



I love that this is a free tool and does not require any account or registration.  When you finish your animation, you get a link and a QR code.  When you click your link to see the animation, you also get the embed code and the option to like it on facebook and to tweet it.

I would use this to create animations to show particle interactions to my students.  I might also give my students a challenge to show me things.  Maybe everyone gets a different chemical reaction that they have to animate?  Or groups do different chemical processes or mechanisms that they animate and share.  The tool is easy enough to show it and create something in less than a period.  It's definitely going on my "try this with students" list for next year.