Creating Computer Animations of Biological Concepts

Abstract

OF the many ways of learning, interpreting visual information is a major means of acquiring understanding. As such, an integral part of teaching is displaying information for the students to see. The most common means of doing this are by writing on a blackboard, using an overhead projector, and showing slides. These methods are good for displaying static forms of information (e.g. lists or outlines, graphs, numbers, drawings of structures, etc.) but are often inadequate to convey movement or changes over time. For example, a drawing on a blackboard may be fine for describing the structure of a gene, but students may get lost during a description of how RNA polymerase interacts with DNA to produce an RNA transcript. A medium like videotape is more applicable to dynamic processes (Winkle 1996). However, students usually do not have access to videotapes outside of class and they often don’t take notes during their display. In addition, videotapes can be expensive and are not always tailored to a specific lesson plan. One way I have found to help the students gain an understanding of dynamic processes is to incorporate these concepts into short animations that can be viewed on the World Wide Web. Viewing these cartoon figures can be more illuminating for students than watching a concept explained on a blackboard. Cartoons can help the student to develop a mental model, which is important to facilitate understanding (Glynn 1998). The World Wide Web makes them accessible to the students and allows them to be played repeatedly at their leisure, until they understand the concepts. My students are very receptive to this use of technology and, as technology is used more and more in the classroom (Nantz & Lundgren 1998), they are becoming more comfortable with these types of display than the old-fashioned means. The technique I use for producing cartoons is Graphics Interchange Format animation. GIF animations are simply compilations of individual images that are designed to play sequentially on a Web browser. Producing GIF animations is easy, involves readily available software, can be done in a few