Alice

Alice

This is the coolest piece of animation freeware I have seen yet. I've played with a number of different pieces of 3D animation software but this has to be one of the easiest I have seen. It is similar to Kahootz
but free. So far there are a couple of weakness I see. It isn't really easy to save the finished animation as a movie so that it can be shared. Reading the forum on the Alice website there are some instructions regarding using screen capture software. I tried this using Camstudio and it worked quite well but it would be a whole lot easier if it was able to be saved out of the software itself. The other thing I haven't seen how to do is create my own characters. I guess this must be possible but it isn't immediately obvious.

Taking this and using it in the classroom has so many possibilities. I'd be really interested in using this sort of software and creating a collaborative online project in the same manner as "Rock our world" does for music. I have already tried to set this up using Pivot
and trying to get teachers from my cluster to have children sharing files. So far no one has taken it up. It probably requires it to be formally set up and promoted. Once a few keen people got on board I think it would fly.
Send me an email if you are interested and I'll see what I can come up with. Or if you know of anyone else doing something like this with a collaborative project sharing animations online I'd be interested.