How EduAdvocate Allies Built School Partnerships Using Animaker

June Erskine
Co-Founder | The EduAdvocate Allies

This case study shows how The EduAdvocate Allies turned years of classroom experience into engaging educational storytelling using Animaker. Discover how animated videos helped the organization build credibility, secure its first school district engagement, develop a lasting district partnership, and create new growth opportunities. 

Meet June Erskine, Co-Founder of The EduAdvocate Allies. This educational consulting group focuses on empowering parents and partnering with schools to ensure every child with exceptional needs receives quality education. Through expert guidance, valuable resources, and dedicated support, the organization promotes fairness, opportunity, and success for all students.

As a new business, building credibility and showing expertise in a meaningful way was a challenge. With Animaker’s help, Loren turned years of classroom experience into engaging animated videos that make complex educational topics easier to understand. These videos help educators and families understand and use research-based practices.

Now, let's hear Loren’s story.

The Challenge

As a new business, we needed to show our customers that we have the expertise to stand out from other educational consulting groups. Many of our specialties, including Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), effective family-school collaboration, and co-teaching, can be perceived as hard to grasp. We needed a way to present research and educational advice that was engaging, memorable, and easy to use.

Why Animation?

Animation helps us share important educational information through storytelling and keeps viewers engaged. It changes complex ideas into content that is practical, enjoyable, and easier to grasp. This method reflects the core of our work. We offer educational guidance that is easy to access, meaningful, and immediately useful to educators and families.

Discovering Animaker

My relationship with animation started way before The EduAdvocate Allies was founded. I’m a Special Education teacher, and I made animated maths lessons using Animaker for my students. The videos went over really well and allowed me to work with small groups while the rest of the students were engaged, taking notes and working on maths problems. Even my colleagues were surprised by how effective the videos were.

We created The EduAdvocate Allies to bring that same engaging approach to professional learning for educators and families. At the time, we were a new organization with no clients and $0 in revenue. 

I started to research animation platforms, and I stumbled upon Animaker. The free version and intuitive interface made it easy to learn and start making animated videos.

Bringing Educational Research to Life

Today, we produce short, research-based animated videos to help educators and families better understand important educational topics. We cover topics such as: Individualised Education Programs (IEPs), evidence-based reading instruction, family-school partnerships, co-teaching, and practical classroom strategies to improve student outcomes.

Instead of asking educators and families to read lengthy reports or technical guidance, we transform research into engaging stories that are memorable, practical, and easy to share. Our videos are used as part of multimedia professional learning sessions and also support parent education.

What We Love About Animaker

Most importantly, what we like most about Animaker is its ability to make difficult educational concepts easy through the form of interesting stories.

Thanks to its easy-to-use interface and rich variety of characters, backdrops, props, animations, and emotions, it allows us to create an educational experience that learners relate to. Also, the customer support team has always been available for any assistance.

The Results

When we initially invested in Animaker, our goal was simple. We wanted to extend our reach by sharing our knowledge in an expanded format, not to use Animaker as a source of income. The investment was made from our own resources because we wanted to create videos that could convey difficult educational ideas in an engaging way.

Our experience with Animaker videos has been much better than we expected. Publishing our Animaker videos has allowed us to have our educational materials seen by administrators and other leaders in schools and districts all over the world and thus helped us to build awareness of The EduAdvocate Allies.

Since then, we have made 15 educational videos that have generated thousands of views and supported professional learning for hundreds of educators.

One of our Animaker videos led to our first professional development engagement with a school district, and the rest is history, as now we have a growing list of partnerships and a series of customized videos.

In addition to the above benefits, Animaker has helped us to make complicated educational ideas clearer and more engaging for viewers and has helped us build our brand and credibility as an organization.

Looking Ahead

Our mission has always been to empower educators and families with research-based educational guidance that improves outcomes for students with exceptional needs.

With Animaker, we've been able to make that guidance more engaging, memorable, and accessible through storytelling. As we continue to grow, we look forward to creating even more animated resources that help educators, families, and school communities learn, collaborate, and succeed together. For more information, visit Eduadvocates Allies or our YouTube channel.