Working Hard During Camp’s Last Week

This is the final week of Renbrook Summer Adventure, and all computer campers are working very hard to complete their projects.  In the mornings, challenge groups are putting the finishing touches on stop motion animation projects in iMovie by adding backgrounds (to replace green screens), musical selections, sound effects, and more.  Other challenge campers are finishing recording and editing their radio shows, and some eager students are continuing to create basic programs using BASIC on the TRS-80 CoCo2 and on the Model 102 laptop.

Meanwhile, the senior campers are making great headway with marketing their products.  Their radio shows are finished and will be posted soon, and their video commercials are nearly complete.  This week, senior campers are working to create their print ads (using Adobe InDesign) and their websites (using WordPress).  More coming soon!

Finally, as a relaxation at the end of the day, Free Choice campers are playing selected computer games.  Originally, I started out by offering computer versions of popular board games, but I extended it to other thinking, strategy-based games.  The favorites have been physics-based games, like Demolition City.  (You can access all the links on the right side of this page.)

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Session 2 Challenge Groups

In this session, we have nearly twice as many computer challenge campers as we did in the first session!  This means that there are usually several different activities going on in the lab at one time.  This week, we had students working on my old TRS-80 color computer (c. 1981) by programming their own “games”.  Other groups began to film their own stop motion films, plan their own radio shows (in the style of radio shows from the 1940’s) and plan their own video projects!  There’s always something interesting happening in the lab!

  

 

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Session 2 Senior Camper Group

This session, senior campers are working to create marketing materials for two products.  One pair of partners has invented a (fictional) pair of headphones called the Althearica (Alter hearing) that alters your brainwaves to immerse an individual in the experience of watching a TV show or movie.  The other pair of partners is marketing new uses for pool noodles.  They’re selling a GROWN pool noodle plant that can not only be fun in the pool but can also be a tasty snack, a foundation for a totem pole, a flight tool in an emergency, and more.  This week, both groups developed product “bibles” that specified what their products can and cannot do, and after learning a bit about logo design, the two groups created their own product logos.  Yesterday and today, the campers scripted out their own radio shows that I plan to have them record and edit on Monday and Tuesday.  Next Wednesday, the campers will start creating their own print advertisements.

 

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Finishing Up Comic Books

This week has been the last week we offered the Comic Life free choice activity.  After three weeks, we have over  20 outstanding comic creations!  Kids (hopefully) brought home printed copies of their comic books, but they are also available on our site (on the Camper Creations page) for your easy access and sharing.

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Creating Commercials

It’s interesting to see how our two senior groups are taking different approaches to filming their commercials.  The shape-shifting pill group is using an interesting blend of photography effects to blend their filming with videos that we found on YouTube.  This lets them create footage that appears to show people shifting into animal form.  Very cool!  They’re also experimenting with using Scratch to create animations for their group.  The TRS80 Minecraft group is creatively making videos within videos by filming commercials that people in their video are watching.  (Confusing to read, but awesome to see!)  These campers are showing creativity and innovation that impresses me each day!

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Radio commercials are finished!

Lots of work went into creating two short advertisements for fictional products!  Besides shifting their mindset to the lesser-used “tell, don’t show” approach, the campers also edited their recordings to make their speech sound perfectly fluent (no “ums” or repeated words or unnecessary pauses) and adjusted audio levels for the best sound quality.  They also selected musical selections and sound effects to enhance their recordings.  Both came from some royalty-free websites that I like to use (which you’ll find linked on the right).  Yesterday, the groups started to storyboard their video commercials, and they plan to start filming and editing today.  We also created their base websites which, right now, look as plain and dull as can be.  I hope to give the campers a chance to sign in on Wednesday so they can start customizing their culminating project!

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Quiet on the set!

The campers who are creating their own radio shows are doing a great job!  All groups have finished writing the scripts of their shows, and most groups have either recorded their own radio show or are about to record their show.  The next part is the fun part: using Freesound and Kevin MacLeod’s sites to download royalty-free sound effects and music clips to go into their radio shows.  All projects will be posted on this site as they are completed.

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Continuing to Develop Stop-Motion Animations

Our challenge groups are continuing to develop their stop motion animations.  All groups have finished planning their projects on storyboards, and most groups have filmed some or all of their animations.  It’s been interesting to see the different topics of the animations.  We have several videos that involve model cars (often involved in some sort of police pursuit), but we also have battling snakes and worms, laughing chairs, and animated figurines.  One group had some extra time and animated their own drawings.  Another group was helpful in inflating some balloons for us and worked them into their video.  (We had fun creating a video where they slowly got buried in nearly 200 balloons.)  All videos will be posted under the Camper Creations part of this site as they are completed.

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Developing Comic Books and Compositions

We had some new activities this week during free choice.  This week, campers during the 1:30-2:30 time block had the opportunity to create their own comic books using a program called Comic Life.  (See links section to the right.)  After making a sample comic using some of my stock photos, the campers planned out their own comic books by choosing what each photo would look like.  On Tuesday, the campers photographed most of their comics, and today, they are using Comic Life to turn their photos into creative comic books.  I’m going to try to print them all today so the kids can bring them home, but I’ll also post the copies here.  Our Garage Band group (2:30-3:20) has grown this week, but the campers again preferred to experiment for themselves.  They will have the opportunity to share their creations today!  It’s been a pleasure working with both sets of campers this week!

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss

Page Design, Scratch

Our seniors are doing great work!  The partnership creating the shapeshifting pill has developed an impressive print media advertisement using advanced design skills in Adobe InDesign.  With some extra time, they’ve taken the initiative to experiment with a program called Scratch, which is a program that helps users to learn some of the concepts of programming in a scaffolded environment.  It is, I believe, created by MIT students and has become very popular in the educational setting.  I’m so impressed that these campers are teaching themselves how to use Scratch without any help from me.  Our other senior campers are meticulously working to create a print media advertisement for their fictional port of Minecraft onto the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer.  Their attention to detail is helping them to create an impressive product!  Bravo!

   

Posted in Renbrook Summer Adventure|By Jon Moss