The Soldering Finish Line is in Sight!

Most of our group is finishing up their soldering projects today!  It's the moment of truth, who's will work and who's will burst into a puff of smoke?!

We'll find out in the comments!

Soldering Light Spiders: Day 2

Today we continued working on our Light Spiders.  Soon they will be ready to rock!

Fall into Soldering!

PNG is back to kick off the Fall season with a quick 4-part class about Soldering!

Today we met for the first time and immediately got a crash course in how to solder electronics.  We're off to a good start and some of these songs will be stuck in our heads forever.

The students elected to solder "Light Spiders" which you may have seen in a previous class's blog post.

PNG Fall Is Almost Here!

This year we're changing things up and offering individual PNG lessons as individual PNG program!  So sign up for the one that interests you the most or sign up for all of them!

Here's what's going on in PNG this fall:

PNG: Soldering - Tuesdays & Thursdays, Sept. 2-11th (2nd, 4th, 9th, 11th) 4pm - 6pm

Join this Project Next Generation class if you want to learn how to solder!  We've got cool electronics kits that light up, drive and scurry.  When you're finished you can take your creation home with you and you'll be an expert in circuitry and soldering!

PNG: Photoshop "Face Paint" - Tuesdays & Thursdays, Oct. 7-16 (7th, 9th, 14th , 16th) 4pm - 5pm

Join this Project Next Generation class if you want to learn Adobe Photoshop basics.  We'll use a combination of cameras, tracing on paper, and photoshop to produce a one-of-a-kind self portrait!

PNG: Halloween L.E.D. Ghosties! - Thursday Oct 30th 4pm - 5pm 

Join this PNG class to make some spooky D.I.Y. "ghosts" using ordinary items and some simple L.E.D.'s (light emitting diodes), batteries and magnets!

PNG: Movie Making - Tuesdays & Thursdays, Nov. 4-25th (4th, 6th, 11th, 13th, 18th, 20th, 25th) 4pm - 5:30pm

Join this PNG program if you want to learn how to shoot and edit your own movie using top-notch HD cameras and Adobe Premiere Elements!  Use our green screen to transport your actors almost anywhere and post your finished videos on your YouTube channel when you're done.  Bring a friend and some ideas and have a blast!

Final Day of Summer or Follow The Money or Mistaken RHCP Song Title Discussion or "Elephants" Intro Is Pretty Good, Rest Of The Song, Not So Much...

So today was the final day of the Summer session of PNG 2014. The students who continued through the end of this session have all been working on different projects based on all the skills they learned in the first half of class.

There's a Kodu game lab world:


::Video Pending::


A Light Spider:

and a Learn To Solder Electric Piano Kit:

Its been a great session! Remember to look for registration for the next session in the Fall!

Solder Spiders, Kodu and music

Today David started another solder creation. This time it's a "spider" bot that can move around using vibrating motors.

Meanwhile, Alex was hard at work putting the finishing touches on his Kodu level and can't wait to show it off.

 Christian worked a bit in Kodu and then switched it up to make music in Mixcraft while our mentors had a Mixcraft jam session and tried out some Makey Makeys.
 

 

 

Auto Shop

Today we helped David finish building his car.  He was the only one who showed up today so he got a lot of attention from the mentors.

He's got a pretty sweet ride.  You can check it out in the video clip below.

Electric Kodu Anime

Today we had 4 students.  2 worked on Kodu and made some interactive worlds.  They programmed Kodu and Rover to shoot missiles, chase enemies and score points!

We had another student do some more soldering.  He's working on a kit that will eventually build a car with an electric motor powered by a 9v battery!

And finally, we had a student making a stop-motion animation by drawing step-by-step pictures on our white board.

Solder Music

We had another small group today.  It seems that our class has officially dwindled to about 3 students on any given day.

Today, Alex and Christian continued work on their songs in Mixcraft while David learned to solder!

Freedom!

Today we started letting the students choose their own projects.  They will be able to work on whatever they please from now on, so we already have a few great projects in progress and finished!

ReMixcraft II

Today we had a skeleton crew for students so we continued our remix work.  We had a few more options to choose from for songs to remix, mostly from the mid-nineties.  Stone Temple Pilots, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana.  It's basically 1994 up in here.

 

https://soundcloud.com/png_eppl/smells-like-teen-spirit-david

 

ReMixcraft

We shifted from producing movies to music production and our budding producers took a shot at remixing Nine Inch Nails' song "Me, I'm Not".  The students took to this project pretty well and re-arranged the original in all kinds of ways!

We'll upload the results just as soon as they start to finalize their mixes.

Here's the original:

Multimedia Encyclopedia

We had a small group today but we got a lot of work done!  Really proud of everyone's creations!

Movie Time!

Here's the first batch of finished video clips we got from our editors today!

More to come in the coming weeks, but our video project is primarily over.  We'll have to wait until later next month our editors will have a chance to get back into their projects.

Post Production Reduction

We had a big reduction in numbers today.  Less than half the class decided to show up, but luckily everyone who was making a movie had their footage already in the can.

So editing continued to go and some of our editors almost have a finished product to showcase!

We'll fix it in post Pt. II: Electric Boogaloo!

Today we finished filming two of three groups and began digital film editing in Adobe Premier. Things are looking pretty good so far!

Plus, we were graced with the added blessing of having two (COUNT 'EM: TWO!) of our veteran/aged out/prospective high school student/former PNG participants: Abdo and Christian (The Knight) come in and be mentor assistants (see third photo).


Here are some photos of today's work:

Shoot 'em up

Despite some serious storyboard issues, we actually got a few of our groups to start shooting their movies today.

I have a lot of hope that these directors are going to produce some awesome movies, but we're already running over schedule.  The producers are upset, but hopefully we'll make it up in post.

Stop! Camera Time

Today the students dipped their toes into the world of shooting and editing video.  We've got 3 different projects going on today.  A fake movie trailer, a short scene from a murder mystery and a Star Wars parody.

I can't wait to see the end results.  I hope some of these groups haven't bitten off more than they can chew!

Before they can film and edit anything they first have to come up with a plan and planning everything out is the hard part.

PNG Painted

We got to see some really awesome results from our new crew of PNG students.  Their faces were shot, printed, traced, scanned and painted.  After they were finished we went back and created backgrounds for them to be placed on.

Turned out really well!

PNG Summer Start!

Today was the first day of PNG Summer 2014!

We introduced ourselves to each other and we got the kids introduced to the computers.  We have a bunch of students who are eager to be here and get started working on cool projects and making cool things! Exciting!

We started off the list of projects with our tried but true Paint Your Face project where kids take a selfie, print it, trace it, scan it, and then paint it!

We'll keep going next time, but we got about halfway done this time around.