Animated GCSE Revision: ‘Know your cells!’

The Idea

Jamie and Ollie: the animation designers.

Two Year 11 boys namely James and Ollie have made an animated cartoon to aid in their GCSE Biology revision as they have their mock exams coming up. They used Windows Movie Maker programmes and other animating software to create an animated cartoon related to cellular biology to aid GCSE students with their Biology. Their film is on cells of animals and what their structure is.

The plan and execution

The animation is two minutes long but took a surprising three days to complete. After spending a day recording voices for their characters they started to animate their biological film. After the voices were recorded they set to work on making their characters and how to make them move. In their film they had a plaster scene cat and a pink transformer motorbike to illustrate their educational film. After the production of the film they shared it with their teachers and published online thus to help their fellow students in their revision.

How it was made available

They were interviewed by BBC reporters to find out exactly what they had in their film and what information they had in it. We asked them some questions which they answered confidently, mainly to find out why they decided to produce their film. The answer to which was they wanted to create revision material which can be accessed by GCSE Biology students easily via the social networking websites Facebook and YouTube.

The project itself

Other reasons for creating the work were so that they could make a future reference to it in higher education and on their CV. The actual animation included revision tips on how to remember the different parts of the cells such as Ribosome, cell membranes, cytoplasm, nuclei and mitochondria. The animation also included information on separate cell functions.

Conclusion

This shows that there is still initiative in GCSE students to go the extra mile in their revision and to help others in theirs and to make difference to help other people around them. It also shows that as a result of the recent media and technology revolution, many more sources are available to aid revision than ever before.