Thursday, September 29, 2016

Movie Making (Mid-Kids) - Day 6

We had to wrap things up today, unfortunately. But on the bright side, we finally learned about green screen keying! Everyone was waiting for the day we could make use of the giant green screen we used during filming. After everyone got to adding their own backgrounds, they just had to add some final adjustments. Once that was all done, we finished our movies! (some more than others).

 Be on the look out for future classes on video editing and filming

Glass Silhouettes - Day 2


We had one last class to finish our awesome vinyl project. Last class, we were able to finish editing our silhouettes in Photoshop. All that was left for us today is to bring our designs to life by cutting them out on our Silhouette Cameo vinyl cutter. We left today with our own unique glass panel crafts!

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Movie Making (Mid-Kids) - Day 5

We are on our last week of the session and we are so close to a finished product we can almost taste it! We wrapped up filming last week and already head a head start on editing, but we continued our editing grind today. We got rough cuts of our film and even started adding some sound effects. We plan on tackling the green screen next class and then just add finishing touches! Maybe even a blooper reel...

Glass Silhouettes - Day 1

Today was a quick intro to our vinyl-themed classes. We got to learn what our Silhouette Cameo vinyl cutter is all about. After giving the students some inspiration, we let them loose and let them pick out their own design online. After that, a quick rundown of how to use Silhouette Studio, the software used to design vinyl cuts, is all we needed to be well on our way to creating our unique pieces of vinyl art!

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Movie Making - Day 4 (MidKids)

That's a wrap for all of our actors and actresses! We wrapped up the final scene today and we can finally movie on to the best part...editing. After exporting all the raw footage, we opened up Adobe Premiere for the very first time. With a quick lesson on how the software is used, we were well on our way to creating a rough cut of our short film.

TinkerCAD - Day 4

Today was everyone's last chance to put finishing details on their designs. After we had all of that taken care of, we were able to save and export our designs into files that our Makerbot 3D printer can print out. All of the designs turned out awesome!

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Movie Making - Day 3 (Mid-Kids)

Lights, Camera, Action! The actors and actresses got a chance to be under the spotlight and put their acting chops to use. Today was also the first day we used the green screen. We got everyone familiar with how the green screen works. We finished a good chunk of the filming for our short film. After we take care of the filming, we have to take care of the tedious editing process.

TinkerCAD - Day 3

Today we continued on the great progress we have built up so far. Getting more advanced in techniques, like using hinges, is helping us create some awesome designs. All we have left are some finishing touches and we should be done. That will be taken care of next class!

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Movie Making - Day 2 (Mid-Kids)

We are still working hard on getting the script done and ready for filming, but we made some really good progress. We have some set props and we should be ready for filming by next class so our scriptwriters must be ready to become actors and actresses very soon! We will take out the green screen next class and get the camera rolling!

TinkerCAD - Day 2

Day two of this 4 part class was today and we really got a good plan going forward! Now that we know all the basics of the TinkerCAD program, we were able to let everyone loose and come up with ideas for their own 3D model!

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Movie Making - Day 1 (MidKids)

Movie making has returned! The highly anticipated class has begun and we got started with a quick intro to movie making. We had a brief summary on how the fancy Hollywood people make movies. After that, we had to put on our creative caps and come up with the script for our short film. This has been the hardest part in the past. After getting past some creative blocks, we got on our way to having a film-ready script!

TinkerCAD - Day 1

It's back to the basics! We had a bunch of first time 3D printers today so we used TinkerCADs software to teach everyone how to create their own designs. Everything from what a 3D printer is to how to move the camera to using the workplane tool. Now that we have all of that out of the way, we are ready to start our very own designs!

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Hour of Code! (Teens)

We are starting to build up our coding confidence now! We are steering away from the simpler block coding are our students are dipping their toes into the world of script coding and Javascript. This is a great step forward to getting to put coding into practical, everyday use. It was both challenging and fun!

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Hour of Code! (Mid-Kids)

Coding is a beautiful thing... We had a bunch of newcomers comers today and they all got started with some basic coding or Code.org so they could learn what they were getting in to. From there, We gave we everyone the choice of continuing on the website or trying out some other coding-based activities we have available.

We continue the coding classes frequently so everyone has the chance to progress with their coding skills. Look out for more of this stuff in the future!