Day 5

Thank you for coming to see the kids' videos and for playing the games they made.  Although we are not yet ready for Hollywood the kids did pick up a good understanding of the process and perhaps a better appreciation of how precise both programming and video production can be.

As promised the final videos for those who could not attend or those who can never see them too many times.

Once again...thank you for giving me the opportunity to work more closely and on a more concentrated project with your children.

I hope to be able to do a camp next year and am of course open to suggestions, so if you have one please send it my way.

Take care and enjoy your summer....

Mark Richardson

ps Eclipse Studios video is still in process.  They have promised to share the video with the class in some format so be on the lookout for a link from them.

Twister Productions

Titan Bros.Cinema

SSK Grapefruits Trailer

SSK Grapefruits: Grapefruit Mania

SuperMonkey Explosions

CineFilms: Spy

Day 4

It seems when teaching a camp that the learning really starts to click just as the camp is coming to an end.

Today we worked exclusively on our videos.  We started the day with an epic Zombie movie shoot that involved almost the entire class.  Pictures to follow.

The students worked very hard to get a rough cut of their project done and I think they are beginning to see how hard it is to deliver a polished product.

We will continue to finalize the productions tomorrow.

I'm hoping your children invited you to the premiere at 11:30 in the computer lab.  I also invited them to come as early as 8 am if they wanted to get some extra time on their video.

I have seen pieces and parts of all of the videos but haven't seen the final product yet so I am excited to see the movies tomorrow as well in their finalized version.

I hope you can join us for the movies and perhaps play the game your child created.

Day 3

Today the students continued to add a few new twists to their games.  We introduced them to two of the more important blocks: variables and broadcasts.  A variable block allows the programmer to have a value (such as speed) change during the game.  In our case it was adding a gas pedal and brakes to our cars.  Our track times were much faster but we also crashed more often.  Students also learned about how to use broadcast blocks.  Broadcasts are how characters or sprites in the game "talk" to each other.  We showed the students how to add a new level to their racing game.  A broadcast block is activated when a races crossed the finish line.  Other blocks are "listening" for the broadcast and launch a new track when they "receive" the message.

Today and was all about getting more footage for our epic ideas.  Despite the off and on rain today we managed to stay dry and get some outside footage.  Students are getting better at being able to download their footage from the various devices so they can work on editing on their PCs.  They learned how to start project files in Adobe Premiere Elements and how to trim and cut video footage together.  It is our goal to sequence the footage tomorrow and have a rough cut of their project.

The students tackled some big ideas and we know we are getting to crunch time.  With that in mind we will be opening the lab early (8 AM) on Friday for any students that want to show up early and get some extra video production time.

Lots of fun pictures today.

Day 2

Students continued on their first game in Scratch.  Today we learned how to add blocks that can sense each other's colors and act as a result of certain colors.  Students were able to program their car to sense that they had reached the finish line and to respond appropriately.  For some students that is a bubble speech that says you won while others added sounds effects.  They also learned how easy it is to copy scripts to other sprites (characters) in the game.  Doing this allowed us to add a second player to our race with very few changes to our program.  Tomorrow we hope to finish this project by adding a gas pedal and brake pedal via special blocks called variable blocks.

With luck we will also introduce a few other games and show some unique features that they might want to include in their own game.

The video portion of the class was a little bumpy today.  We had a few technical difficulties with our Apple devices not playing nicely with our Microsoft devices.  Students continue to gather their raw footage but today we struggled with some of the downloads.  We did have some success once we switched to Google Drive as a solution.  We should complete those instructions tomorrow and get our first edit completed.

We also showed sample projects to get the kids creative juices flowing about project ideas.  I was little worried about the students generating ideas for their projects but boy was I wrong.  As a former English teacher I remember students struggling with ideas about what to write about.  Well, when it comes to visual communication they don't seem to have any struggle.  We have a dinosaur discovery, a chase movie, a sci-fi zombie movie, a spy movie, and a suspenseful mystery/fantasy movie on the boards.  What a creative group!

Not much time for pics today but we did manage to snap a few.

Back from their assignment is Super Monkey Explosions (Nathan, Brian, Dylan)

Titan Bros. Cinema was happy to add their good friend Eshaan to the group.

Jake and Stella sharing ideas.

Dylan and the other Super Monkeys downloading files.

Avery seeks tips on getting her files downloaded.

Eshaan checking out the iphone as camera.

Brian and Dylan working on their video downloads.

Day 1

We had a great first day and I hope your kids enjoyed it.  My sons and I had fun getting started today.

We started the day by introducing students to Scratch, our game making software.  Scratch is free software developed by MIT.  We love this software because it is free and the kids can use it anywhere they have web access.  They created an account so they can keep track of their games.

 The Scratch website also allows students to share their creations with others.  One of my favorite things about Scratch is that students can find a game that inspires them and they can look inside the game to see how it was programmed.  That way a student can teach themselves new programming tricks within the Scratch website.

The best way to learn how to use Scratch is to build games together that make use of different blocks.  After a few games students will be able to apply their new learning to their own game creations.  The game we started today is a simple racing game.  Students are already thinking of great ideas on how to improve the game.

The second half of today was spent on video production.  Students broke up into different groups and then came up with a name for their production companies.  We then gave the students some basic instruction on how to shoot and then gave them a flipcam, an ipad, and an iphone.  Each group has three different devices they can use to shoot.  We explained we never just shoot the scene once and that having different angles of the same shot can allow us some creativity.  Their assignment today was to shoot their project intro.  It will be short clip showing each team member playing over a background song.  

Tomorrow we will learn to download the videos to our machines and cut them together and then add a soundtrack.  This is only an intro so we will work with students to make their intros funny and clever while keeping them around 30 seconds.

Here are our groups.

CineFilms: Jake, George, Franny, Stella

Eclipse Studios: Stephen, Nikhil, Christian, Anthony

SSK Grapefruits: Sydney, Keegan, Sophia

Titan Bros. Cinema: Pearce, Ryan, Xavio 

Twister Productions: Sarah, Avery, Grayden

Super Monkey Explosions was "on assignment" at picture time and I will be sure to add them tomorrow.  The Super Monkey explosion is made up of Dylan, Brian, and Nathan.

Get Ready, Get Set.....GO!

Almost time....

We have been working hard making sure we have some great games to build this week.  All the i-devices are charged and ready to go so we are also ready to start shooting our videos.

We look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow morning at the elementary school.

My sons (Ben and Sam) will be my co-teachers this summer.  They both attend Loveland High School and are very interested in working with technology and young learners.

Can't wait to get started....

Mr R

Day 5: One Last Post

Ben, Sam, and I hope your child enjoyed our Lego+Minecraft camp.  It was a great opportunity for us to spend extended time on fun projects that we just don't have the time to do during the regular school year when we meet for 35 minutes per week.

It is our hope to provide more technology camps in the future.  Ideas for camps include game design/programming, movie making (shooting, editing, publishing), stop motion animation, 3D design and printing and perhaps some smartphone application development using MIT's App Inventor.  If you have any suggestions for camps we certainly want to hear them.  You can leave comments on this post or email me at mark.richardson@ih.k12.oh.us.

We finished the camp almost a week ago and I have finally found some time to upload the final set of videos.

Genetic Awesomeness Cargo Challenge

Minecrafters Cargo Challenge

Boss Brainiacs and the Orchard Challenge

And finally the excitement of Minecraft.  Harry recorded a video of the class Minecraft session on Thursday.  The video was a little too close to the screen so the picture was blurry but I have included a few minutes of audio so you can hear how excited everyone is.