IHTechCamp

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.