AI Tool Demo: Bringing Student Art to Life

Young students love to draw—for many, it’s one of the first creative passions they develop. At the same time, animated TV shows and movies loom large in the cultural consciousness of most young learners. So what if it were possible to combine the two in the classroom? Imagine the possibilities of an app that could animate student drawings at the touch of a button. 

A new AI tool from Meta called Animated Drawings is helping to make that dream a reality. When provided with a photograph of a sketch—as long as the sketch has a human-like pose, with four limbs and a head—Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI) can quickly identify the figure’s appendages and, within seconds, convert it into over two dozen different short, looping GIFs. A child who draws a four-eyed, winged monster, for example, can quickly see what it would look like if the monster knew how to tap-dance, jump rope, or perform judo moves.

In this short demo, Edutopia’s assistant editor Daniel Leonard explains how to access and use this new tool—and shares some of the ways that pre-K and early elementary teachers are using it to drive learning in the classroom.

For example, some teachers have noted that primary school students—who love creating drawings to input into the tool—have improved their pencil grip over the course of the year as a result. Others say that their students have improved their draftsmanship, too, as they’ve noticed that the AI gives better results if they’re able to give it a figure that’s more precisely human-shaped (and less abstract or squiggly). Meanwhile, other teachers have used the animations as a jumping-off point to have their students engage in creative storytelling around their original characters.

To read about other fun ways teachers are deploying AI in the classroom—from using AI-generated images as writing prompts to having students converse with AI imitations of historical figures—check out Leonard’s feature for Edutopia titled “9 Tips for Using AI for Learning (and Fun!).”