What We Learned at iPad Camp

Kristin Reiber Harris

I am in the middle of a new series of iPad camps for Lynchburg City Schools. Here are a few thoughts about what I learned during 4 sessions of iPad Camp sponsored by the Daura Gallery at Lynchburg College in June. You will see lots of samples of student work and get an idea of what they learned. Some students came with some experience with animation or video, but many did not.

iPads As Creative Tools
I am even more convinced iPads are incredible tools for stimulating creative problem solving and critical thinking. The students at the four sessions at Lynchburg College ran the gamet from kids as young as 8 (by just a few days) to a retired college professor. There was a broadcast media professional, an artist, four sets of parent and child and high school students. This rich tapestry of participants produced an wide variety of work, as you can imagine.

These creative experiences with technology reinforce the value of being a content creator, not just a content consumer. 

Artist Nugent Kos used Procreate to paint this beautiful spider web for her interactive Composer Pro project.

Demibooks Composer Pro and Interactive Stories
The most sophisticated projects were completed in Composer Pro. Nugent's spider, shown above, was programmed in Composer Pro to come down into the middle of the web and catch a mosquito. This was a complex task that required numerous behaviors, all possible in this accessible app development tool. Another Composer Pro project was a retelling of Hindu mythology with an image build of Krishna appearing in a stone. Another student made a lengthy fanzine of one of her favorite TV shows.

Good Beginning Project for Animation
I have traditionally asked students to create an animation of fire works for their first project. This is a good way to get used to the drawing tools and get the feel of onion skinning or the functionality that allows an animator to see previous frames while working on the new frame. Fireworks are still good for that idea of sequential drawings. Another important idea is copying frames to eliminate having to redraw each one. This YouTube video is one I have shown students in the past, but this time I asked everyone to do their own version. I got some great results. Building the castle wall is now my go- to second project for animators.  

 

Fulton's reel from iPad camp

The Dream Team
FlipBoomCartoon and iMovie are a great combo. The students could make animations in FlipBoom, export as Quicktime movies and open in iMovie. iMovie let them edit if necessary but most importantly add audio. As an animator it was always humbling to me to realize how critical great audio, well any audio is, to creating compelling animation. I always encouraged students to move their animation project into iMovie to finish. On some occasions there just wasn't enough time. I think you can see the potential in both of these projects even without an audio track.

 

Logan's animation that begs for a Part 2

Siri had fun with this retelling of friend's story. FilpBoomCartoon has drawing tools she used well.

 

Siri's animation

iPad Camp Compilations
There were a few students who did complications or overviews of what the iPad camp experience was like, all on their own initiative. This first is an animation by Zach, with of all things a parody of work done the week before. See if you can find it. He did a very clever job even including hand drawn versions of the logos of the apps we used.

 

Zach's overview of iPad Camp

Not All Kids

I had numerous adult students. This is Winkie's animation project. She had no experience on iPads or with animation and put a lot of energy into this successful first animation project.

 

Winkie's first animation

Parents and Kids Learning Together
One of the nice surprises were the number of parent(s)/child teams that were in attendance. It was actually the parents who were the ambitious ones in this match up. Without exception, the kids embraced the challenges but were less focused. The parents were perhaps more timid and cautious but ended up with memorable first projects. I had one parent tell me his son was helping him. It was a win/win.

Video Projects
Many of the projects completed during the 2 weeks of iPad camp were videos made in iMovie. Making trailers was a favorite of some of the students, you saw a sample of a trailer by Callie in my last article. iMovie does a good job of making it very easy to come up with a "polished" production with lots of graphics.  A few students had fun playing around with the newscast template. Here is an ambitious project by Drake that interviews all of his fellow campers and provides a lot of information about the experience the kids were having. Next year we'll have a mike for more reliable audio.

Kids and Animation
It is interesting to observe the ages in which children begin to grasp the concept of sequential images. Most of the eight and nine year olds were wildly productive with our animation app, FlipBoomCartoon. What they were doing was rapidly creating stories that progressed as a graphic novel, not an animation. Of course they see animation all the time, but this did not bother them or slow down their creative frenzy. We can adjust the frames per second so this still produced viewable projects.

Give Students Free Range on Choice of Projects
I like the idea of giving students lots of options when they choose to come into an academic environment during school breaks. A primary reason is I like to learn something new working on a project that has meaning to me. I remember my days in school long ago when one size was supposed to fit all. I want students to hone their skills while they are working on something that has meaning to them, not just an assignment. I introduced an animation app, a video production app and an interactive book app. (That was a busy day!) Then they were given storyboards and told to "Go for it". As you can see above, they had a ball and did a lot of exploring. I hope for all of them this is one step on a road of creative media production.