Have You Heard The News?

The news is about to be delivered!  The PNG Lab transformed into a newsroom today as our editors furiously wrote the next PNG News Broadcast.

Filming starts on Thursday (news moves a little slower around these parts) and you can expect to see some results by next Tuesday or Thursday depending on how well the students transition from being copy editors to film editors.

News.

Mixing it Up

We spent more time mixing it up today.  We're getting closer to being finished with our songs.  The students could probably keep working on them forever and never be finished.

Towards the end of class Brian explained the concept of audio mixing to the class and now we are hard at work trying to master these songs and make them sound better by adjusting the audio levels for each instrument track.  If we finish soon perhaps we can post a few of them to our SoundCloud page for you to hear!

Getting Crafty With The Mixes!

Today the students tried their hand at making their own song mix using the samples in Acoustica Mixcraft's sound library.

This particular challenge was to use only sounds from the sample library and to construct a song using a specific tempo and key.

The results were pretty impressive.  We also had a few students who used the Instrument Track function of Mixcraft to play notes on a virtual instrument using their keyboard.

We're going to keep working on this next time and maybe we'll even start recording some live sounds to add in to our songs!

MixCraft it up!

So today was like garbage truck full of highly sensitive plastic explosives falling off a cliff into a densely populated minefield with an atom bomb in the center for good measure.

There was a lot of noise... I guess is what I would want you to take away from that.

But the UPSIDE is everyone got comfortable with MixCraft, our music creation, remixing, editing and recording software and they all seemed to have a good time with it.

Next class we begin getting serious with our beats and constructing full songs with a set of qualifications and parameters.

Its going to be great! See you then!

Ko-du Back Again!

We continued to our Kodu levels and some even attempted to branch out into multiple levels. The designs are becoming more sophisticated and the game play more complex. I don't know why but everybody was incredibly quiet during class. I was beginning to get paranoid. Not gonna lie.

Next class we begin music and perhaps we'll have time toward the end of the semester to complete more Kodu.

Big ups to Microsoft.

Peace!

You Do Kodu!

Today we totally shifted gears and the kids tried their hands at Microsoft's free programming software for kids from their Research Lab.  It's called Kodu.

The kids are able to create their own world all the way down to what kinds of trees and rocks are in the world.

Needless to say they took to it instantly and got busy creating their own worlds and programming the behavior of the characters in those worlds.

We're going to keep going into the next class.  Who knows what they'll come up with.

Poster Session

We got some actual results today.  Lots of posters printed.  There's always room for improvement, so the kids started new posters after the old ones finished printing.

Posterocity

Today we made posters.  The students used the work they'd done in the previous couple classes to create a poster in Adobe Photoshop.

For a lot of them it was their first time using Photoshop and learning to use such an advanced tool was difficult to say the least.  They picked it up faster than any class I've seen to date.  We only managed to print out one actual poster but the rest are close to being done.

Paint Crazy

They figured it out.  Then they were off to the races.  The PNG students were pumping out more artwork than a Korean animation house.  

The end goal is to have enough artwork to fill a full-size poster.  We'll set to work creating the poster in Adobe Photoshop next class and print the whole thing out on the library's poster printer!

This is Matias' weird friend.

Face Paint

Today we really got started with our first project.  At the end of the last class we learned how to use the digital cameras, take photos and transfer them to the computer.

Once the photos were on the computer we turned them black and white to make them easier to trace, then printed them out and traced them on are super snazzy lightboxes.  After we traced them we scanned them back into the computer using our brand new document scanner and then used Microsoft Paint to put the color back in!  We're not quite done, but we posted some preliminary results below.

Spring Session Start!

Today was the first day of our PNG Spring session!

We took some time to introduce everyone.  There were a lot of new faces and we are all super best friends now.

We got familiarized with the computers and some of the equipment and got started on our first project!

We don't have any results to share now, but they'll be coming soon!

Springing Back Into Action!

PNG is coming back!

We've hibernated through this winter long enough!  Time to wake up our brains with another 8 weeks of fun (and free!) technology classes for 6th, 7th and 8th graders!

Project Next Generation starts Tuesday, February 18th and runs every Tuesday and Thursday from 4pm to 6pm until April 10th.

This time around we've got 10 brand new computers for the students to use and we're taking 3D printing to a new level with our new Makerbot Replicator!

Our classes will teach students about video cameras and video editing, music making and audio editing, Photoshop, electronic circuitry, 3D design and printing and more in a fun and relaxed classroom atmosphere.

Sign up online and join Ahren and Brian for class on Tuesday February 18th!

Last Day Sad Face

Today was the last day of PNG Fall 2013!

We had some really good times.  We had some rough moments.  We barely scratched the surface on all of the stuff that we had planned, but time has run out!

Hope to see you in February!

Down to the wire

With one class remaining after today the stakes are high.  Whoever finishes first gets to do nothing for the last class!

So close

We've got two students who are super close to finishing.  The race is on.  Will they finish or won't they?!

Darkest before Dawn

This soldering project is getting tough.  There are doubts as to whether we will finish.  We've got some mis-matched parts from our Mammoth Fuzz Pedal kits and they neglected to send us the wires we need to wire everything together.

Ahren picked up some wire at RadioShack, but unfortunately they didn't have the correct gauge.

We're trying to make it work but things are difficult, the instructions aren't very helpful and today only 3 students showed up.

Here's hoping that the night is darkest just before the dawn.

Good Solders don't die, they just fade away

Today we continued soldering again.

This is turning into a pretty intensive project, but we're ... soldering on.

Hopefully we'll have some real results by next week.

Solder On

Today we started the next step in our soldering lessons.

Now, we're making a guitar pedal for each student.  If this works each student will have a working guitar pedal that they will each have a unique sound when they record their songs later on this session.

We're sorry.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to the parents of our PNG students.  Today we finished soldering together our electric pianos and the results are intensely annoying.

We're sorry.

On the plus side, your child has successfully learned to solder!

STOP! Solder Time!

Today the students learned how to solder!

Seriously!

We took them very slowly through the basics of soldering and then let the kids begin assembling an "electric piano".

Once hooked up to a battery, you can press the buttons to make tones that play from the speaker.  Every aspect of the device has to be soldered together.

The guys did great and we had zero burns and no accidents!