My third graders are showing off the beginnings of their animation project in the Doink App through the Cinemagram app. Explore both!
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I was asked today by Melissa, art teacher in a Cincinnati Jr. High, to relay my experience rotoscoping with my 5th graders on iPads.
I had mapped out a plan a long while back as to how I was going to approach this lesson and found that I did made some modifications along the way.

1. Students created a short video (Learned that adding transitions like fading out doesn't translate well when student did a contour line drawing-skip that next time)
2. Convert the video to jpgs (try using MPEG Stream Clip (free download) Here is my  screencast showing you how to do this.
3. Dropped the images into Dropbox (They were all 001-335 already so everything was in order)
4. Assigning images to students (I was taking too much time with this process. I should have just written the image numbers on tickets and have a bucket for them to grab from. Then later when I needed to reject an image, which I did many times on my quality control checks, I would just put the number back into the bucket)
5. Import into layer in Brushes (yes----but they draw in a layer over the photo then hide the photo under the white layer before the turn it in. If they followed directions then it worked. If they drew on the photo layer. they wasted their class time. UGH!)
6. Uniform protocol (We all chose solid black lines size 3, full opacity and decided how to deal with difficult parts of the video together)
7. Turned back the art via email (They wrote their name and image number under the drawing in digital ink in Brushes and used the Subject line of the email to tell me again their name and image number) 
8.Collect the images (I grabbed the images from email and renamed them by number and artist ie, "007jessica" Everything neatly stacked up in the folder. So I dropped them all into imovie with .2sec no effects and made the movie. It was too slow at first. So I exported it-reimported it and used the speed adjustments to make it faster. I tried gifninja to make an animation of some in-progress images.
9. Tweak and turn in (we were able to submit it to Rotoball 12 after we cropped it to 15 seconds and added the ball in and ball out as required)

For more information see the post that has all the links for this project here.
Below is our amazing collaborative ipad generated original Rotoscoped animation by 5th graders!
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You're going to be amazed more by the process (though the product is super cute too!)
Listen to what the kindergartners were able to do on their iPads over the past few weeks in art class:  Students spent 3 class sessions trying to learn how to turn on their wireless signals in their setting on iPads, find my website to download their snowman template, import it into the Brushes App, add a layer over the image, choose their brush sizes and colors, digitally paint these adorable snowman accessories, and email me their finished work! 
Make sure you congratulate these amazing digital artists!  (Hopefully the other classes go as well this week.) See the whole gallery as it grows here.
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It was only a theory when I first posted my thoughts on how to teach my kindergartners how to access their digital template for making their digital snowmen paintings. 
View my video of how I planned to teach this here.
This past week was our first experience trying to see how kindergartners could handle all the steps, concepts, and button pushing necessary to do this technique. It took every moment of my 1/2hr art class to walk them through the steps from turning on the wifi to importing the saved image into the Brushes App, but WOW they did it!  I don't know how I would do this without the Apple TV. I need to walk around the room, demo, and show my screen all at once to do a really good job and Apple TV's ability to mirror my iPad exactly is perfect for this!
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I have a feeling that the iPads will be a wonderful tool for Rotoscoping. I'm working on a plan to try this with my students. Here is what we plan to do...
1. Create a short video sequence that loops well (that my preference)
2. Convert the video to numbered sequential images (I used MPEG Streamclip)
3. Drop the images into the Dropbox App
4. Assign each student an image from the sequence
5. Import the image into a layer in Brushes app
6. Create a drawing with a uniform protocol defining colors, line size, and strategy) in a layer over image
7. Turn back the finished drawing after deleting the image layer via email with image number as the subject line
8. Collect all images and convert into a video in iMovie or an animated gif using this tool
9. Then tweak your final product to make it eligible for the international Collaborative Student Animation project,  Rotoball 2012
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How we learn in the art room is expanding as our digital tools grow. Take a look below at how students can now explore the concept of contour line drawing with the interactive whiteboard and the iPads.
Mirroring the iPad wirelessly with Apple TV not only makes teaching on the iPads easier, but it also shows my students everything in the Brushes App which makes teaching art projects in the Brushes App possible.. Brushes only selectively projects through VGA. The tools and layers do not show making it much harder to teach art making.
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I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to participate in some professional development sessions lately. Beth Breaux ( @drydentech )and I (@fuglefun ) had a video Skyping session with the art teachers, technology people, and administrators of a St. Louis, MO K-8 school district on Nov. 2nd after school to discuss iPads in the Art Room. I was able to share my screen and demo using the dropbox and brushes apps and shared some tips for managing images and artist statements on Artsonia. (I was able to do this because I had a technology buddy practice skyping with me where we played with a bunch of options and in the software until I felt comfortable, (Thanks Carol Broos @musictechie )
 Beth was able to explain the networking and management challenges of our 100 iPads. 
Here is a screen shot from our talk:
Then on Thursday I was able to participate in Downers Grove School District #58's "Transformative Learning Experiences" technology professional development day.
I presented mainly to the art teachers a whole slew of things. But, since the group was small we had a chance to test out equipment, ask lots of questions, figure out how what I was showing them could be used right away in their classrooms and what things were to come in the future. I loved this experience and felt like I made some friends:) Here is a picture of art teacher Jon Belonia testing the Bluetooth pressure sensitive Wacom tablet in the  free MAC app Sketchbook Express.
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This quick tutorial will explain all the steps for leaving comments to our buddy classrooms using our newly updated iPads. We have to remember to always turn on and OFF the airplane mode to connect to the internet and disconnect from the internet when we're done.
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We had the class set of iPads in the art room all last week. Every grade level explored and made digital art in a variety of ways. Take a look at how transformative this tool is in the art room!
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Today is the start of iPads in art class week. We've already made wonderful masterpieces. Watch my demo below (or with this link) of how the fifth graders made their own version of Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth. I uploaded their final pieces on Artsonia already. View them here. Here is a quick video of a student working on hers (click here.)
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