iCreate to Educate is a startup dedicated to helping teachers use low-cost tools and SAM Animation software from the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach to enable students to make their own stop-motion animations.  Tufts developed SAM Animation to give K-12 students an easy, intuitive medium for developing their understandings of science and math (see examples and white paper).

iCreate to Educate introduces and supports the use of SAM Animation in classrooms by:

• Offering hands-on workshops to train teachers, who can then train other teachers,
• Developing lessons that are flexible enough to fit into existing curricula, and
• Providing simple, low-cost, effective tools:  SAM Animation software, webcams to work with schools’ existing computers, and prop kits.

The cost for outfitting a classroom with webcams, stands, and a SAM Animation site license is under $2000.  iCreate to Educate lists potential sources of grants for funding such innovation in the classroom.  See also iCreate’s flyer for teachers (PDF).