by Oliver Breidenbach

Boinx Software was invited to participate in the didacta 2005 Apple Solution Experts booth, hosting a workstation and a daily presentation on the booth's stage. Here are some impressions and a wrap up of the event.

There are teachers who don't get it: One teacher came up to our booth and asked: "Why should I do animations in front of the class?" When I challenged him to change his means of teaching, he said: "But then one would have to throw away the book."

Fortunately, there are also others. See the example movies and the most important reasons for animation in the classromm on the right part of this page.

For two days we were visited by the "IBook Class" from Hamburg. Those 8th graders where cool, giving very professional presentations of their work. They plan to use iStopMotion in the future, so their teacher told them to go and find out how it works so that they could teach their classmates upon returning to Hamburg.

Every one of them has their own iBook. These kids will give us a run for our money when they finish school. After their presentations, they got off the stage quickly, downloaded the pictures from their cameras to their iBooks, found an open WiFi Network and got online to their classmates for a report. Amazing.

Very important for students is the immediate feedback - they can see what they have done and enjoy it.

Animation keeps the students fascinated.

Master Paul Goodyear demoing Garageband: He could have jammed the night away...

VIP visit: The picture for the Alexandra Maier Fan Club. Apple Germany Marcom Manager Alexandra and Georg Albrecht, Apple Press Speaker at the Boinx workstation.

The press after the event highlighted the critics of media in the classroom who fear that form would take precedence over content. Had they been there when the class from Würzburg showed off their movies, they probably would have understood why form is important and how it enables content.