Creating a stop-motion video or a time-lapse videos can be a good way for students to tell a story in the style of Gumby. Making stop-motion and time-lapse videos can also be a good way for students to demonstrate how a lengthy process works without making people watch a long video. The following free tools make it relatively easy to create stop-motion and time-lapse videos.

Stop Motion Animator is a free Chrome app for creating stop motion videos. The app is free and easy to use. It does not even require students to create accounts in order to use it. Watch the following video to see how to use Stop Motion Animator.

ClapMotion is another Chrome app that students can use to create stop-motion videos. I don’t have as much experience with this app as I do with Stop Motion Animator featured above. But in my limited use I found it just as easy to use as Stop Motion Animator. ClapMotion’s promo video embedded below provides a nice example of how students can use ClapMotion in school.

Parapara Animation is a free animation creation tool that has been around of years. Rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. The tool was developed and is hosted by Mozilla. The tool is easy to use and it does not require registration in order to use it. Watch my tutorial video to learn how to use Parapara Animation.

OSnap is an iPad app (available in a free version and in a paid version) that you can use to create stop motion and time lapse videos. The app is quite easy to use. To create a video with the OSnap app you simply need to start a project and take a series of still pictures using your iPad’s camera. Then adjust the number of frame per second to edit your video. If you want to, you can add a sound track to your video by selecting audio files that are stored on your iPad. You can go back and edit your videos by removing images and from the project at any time. Completed projects can be stored on your iPad, uploaded to YouTube, or shared via email.

ABCya Animate is a free tool that students can use to create animations. It can be a great tool for elementary school and middle school students to use to create animations to use to tell a short story. For example, in my demonstration video the animation I started to make could be used as part of a larger story about marine life or ocean ecosystems. To complete the story I would need to add some more drawings and perhaps some text for clarification. Your students might also use short animations as part of larger multimedia project. Watch my demonstration video embedded below to learn more about how to use ABCya Animate.

Bonus item! 
For many years JellyCam was my go-to tool for making stop-motion videos. While it is still available to download and use for free, the developer is no longer supporting the software. If you want to give it a try anyway, watch my tutorial video to see how to get started.