Challenging Student Creativity with Great Results: iPad Camp at ACOA

Artwork created in Procreate by iPad Camp student

The last full week in July was iPad Camp at the Academy Center of the Arts in Lynchburg. This was an especially wonderful group of kids. There were 3 boys and 3 girls. That turns out to be a great balance of energy and skills. The girls were older and more focused, the boys were younger and higher energy.  These camps provide kids with an opportunity to challenge their creative problem solving skills by learning media production tools in a non-structured environment. I am most appreciative of ACOA efforts to develop arts/technology programming.

What I Learn from Three Year Olds on iPads

Kristin Reiber Harris
KristinHarrisDesign.com

I am back in the house, that is the Yellow House at Elizabeth's Early Learning Center. I had been visiting my three year old friends at this day care center for a number of years when my schedule last year made it difficult to get there. I'm back and boy am I thrilled about it.

What's so wonderful about this experience?

It's always fun to spend time with individuals who are happy, friendly and into what's happening right now, whether they are three or fifty.  

I am so respectful of their intelligence. These kids are curious and smart. As a general rule they are pretty fearless, certainly about making mistakes. They spend quite of bit of their day learning by making mistakes. (I do too.) This comes quite naturally.

I love sharing information and helping others build skill sets. That is what education is all about and interactive experiences can be a great way to explore information. 

iPads and Engaging Kids in Art: App with Museum Assets

Kristin Reiber Harris

Art Museum Apps for Kids
Independent Developer's Art Museum Assets Apps for Kids
Free Solution Anyone Can Use

I just returned from the Virginia Docent Exchange at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Va. Two other docents and I were representing the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College. At the conference I had the opportunity to present a session about iPads, kids and art museum related apps.

Chrysler Museum

This was my first visit to the Chrysler Museum which was recently renovated. It is beautifully situated on a body of water known as the Hague in downtown Norfolk, VA. The museum was originally founded in 1933 as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. It changed names in 1971 when industrialist Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. donated his extensive collection to the museum.

We arrived at the museum early on Sunday afternoon so we would have a few minutes to visit their collection before the conference started. I was pleased to find this in their collection.

Standing Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (Guanyin Pusa), 19th century, China.
Chrysler Museum Photo credit: Kristin Harris

iPads, Flip Books and Animation

Kristin Reiber Harris

I Love Animation

I love watching it and I especially love making animations. Some of the coolest people I know are animators. I have enjoyed sharing this enthusiasm with others for many years. iPads add a twist to the process with a new set of tools and great portability. I recently did an animation workshop for elementary age kids using FlipBoomCartoon. Now I have a chance to offer this same opportunity to my students at Lynchburg College.


What Tools Will We Use?
My Drawing 1 students will be using iPads next week. This is a first for me to be able to offer beginning drawing students access to art making tools on an iPad. The college just got 30 iPads last semester. They will be using FlipBoomCartoon to make animations and Procreate for drawing. If we have time, I'd like to see them bring gesture drawings from Procreate into iMovie to create an animation of stills.

Another ABC app? Why?

Kristin Reiber Harris

ABC.DC:An Art Alphabet  Available soon in the App Store.

Why another ABC app?

I spend an hour a week with 3 year olds and my iPad at Elizabeth's Early Learning Center in Lynchburg, VA. I love this time with them because they are such radiant, intelligent individuals that embrace the moment and run with it. They constantly amaze me in wonderful ways.

Gov School: A Teaching Moment All Month

I am still feeling the glow from one month with thirteen students in a collaborate, creative environment watching them take pieces of information I provide and weave a varied tapestry of media projects. This group of students was particularly focused, intelligent and adventuresome. 

Gov School 2013 in Schewel Lobby  Photo: Matt who happened to be passing by

The Original Plan

In the previous 4 years I have taught this course, Flash has been the software I have used to introduce students to the basics of animation and interactive design.  My intention this summer was to introduce Flash for the first two weeks and then have the students transition to media/app development with Demibooks Composer Studio. We had 13 gleaming iPads begging to be used.

What Really Happened

I have a great deal of respect for students who are so motivated they choose to spend a month in the summer taking classes when they could be involved in other kinds of activities. As a result I have always made it clear to my students at Gov School that if they have a burning desire to complete a particular project, they can. There is usually at least one student who gets involved in an ambitious project and wants to spend all 4 weeks on it. It was true this year as well.  

I was particularly interested in having the students explore the capabilities of Composer Studio as a game production tool. Most of Demibooks developers are creating kids book-like apps. This was a hurdle for my students. Some of them just couldn't get past that focus to see how they could use it for comic books or graphic novels, even if they didn't want to make a game. I honored their wishes and no one did more than basic tutorials in Composer Studio who wasn't motivated. That said we got some very strong projects in both Flash and Composer Studio. 

For a brief time during the third week I felt like I was herding cats...everyone off in their own direction. However, thanks to their intelligence and perseverance, they were able to trouble shoot, many on their own and everyone ended the course with very substantial projects to their credit.

Memorable Teaching Moments

Interview Software Company Founders

I love the idea of inspiring budding entrepreneurs. Demibooks CEO Rafiq Ahmed has been very accessible since responding to a Twitter message I sent from the Sandbox Summit conference in April. His partner in Australia, Daniel Hotop has been equally supportive. I have been very impressed with the genuine interest in user feedback (certainly a sound business policy).  When Rafiq offered to have a web conference with the Gov School students I thought it was a win-win situation. My students have the opportunity to get questions answered in real time and meet company CEO and his co-founder, chief programmer, Daniel Hotop (speaking to us from Australia) and Demibooks got feedback from a batch of new, techno-savvy users.

This happened at the beginning of week 4, so the students had had enough time to delve into their Composer Studio projects. In fact, the sophistication of the preview questions I sent Rafiq before the event, especially about coding, prompted him to have Dan in on the session too. I had also sent 2 student games and 1 student book project for their review before our conversation. I wanted Demibooks to see what the students had been able to accomplish. I was thrilled to hear them say they had played Sean's accelerometer maze game all morning. Very cool! 

We spent almost an hour talking to Rafiq, Daniel and intern Peter Bertucci. There were specfic questions for Dan about programming issues, general feedback about the students' experiences with the app, student suggestions and some ideas about where Demibooks is headed. I think the students were pleased to hear about a Demibooks/Virginia connection. Rafiq went to graduate school at Virginia Tech.

Sita Sings The Blues and Intellectual Property

One of our themes this course was intellectual property...or rather I should say one of my themes. When asked where a student got an image they were including in a project I frequently got the response, "from Google".  As if Google was a fruit tree of images for the taking. I am not a lawyer so my understanding of intellectual property law is basic at best, but it's such an important issue and in such a state of flux these days. I am a huge fan of Kirby Ferguson's "Everything Is A Remix", the web documentary about creativity in all realms and where ideas come from and how they evolve, specifically relating to copyright and patent laws. Ferguson presents the theory that "copy, transform and combine" is at the core of creativity.

We watched each of the 4 segments on separate days and had a brief discussion about the content after each segment. They are very well done and inspire discussion.  I continued to have students who didn't seem to distinguish between copyrighted material and those images the creators had made available for use by others. Some habits are hard to break.  

Frame from Sita Sings the Blues, animated feature by Nina Paley

It all came home to them when we watched Sita Sings the Blues, an animated feature film created primarily with Flash, the software the students had all used in class.  I explained to them that the creator, Nina Paley had run into copyright issues, quite unexpectedly. She had done her research, just not as deeply perhaps as she should have. It all hit home when one of the students said, "but she got paid, right?". Well not exactly, certainly not the way she intended. This is how Nina explains her copyright issues on her website.

Q: Can you describe “Sita’s” copyright issues?

A: It’s about the songs themselves. All the research I did was on the recordings, which are not covered by federal copyright law, which is great. However, the compositions that underlie the recordings are not only controlled, they’re controlled by corporations that have no regulation on what they can charge. For me to get permission from them to use these 80-year old songs would have cost me more money than it cost to make the entire film. The songs were supposed to be in the public domain in the ’80s, but everything’s been extended by big media corporations for various reasons. It poses quite a challenge to tiny little low-budget artists like me. What they’re asking for is a really a drop in the bucket for a big studio or a big production. But it’s completely untenable for me. (source)

I get a big kick out of how much students enjoy Sita Sings the Blues. I have shown it for years now. The film is a brilliant mix of multiple stories, one autobiographical and the other based on the Ramayana. The artwork is also a mix of styles of classical Hindu art and contemporary animation. This is copy, transform, combine to perfection. I hope Kirby Ferguson has seen it.

Our AnimaJam 

Veronica's box, beginning and end of each student's short animation

An AnimaJam is a short film that consists of a series of animations by different animators that begin and end with the same frame/image so that they can be linked together. I have had students do this before and it's always a lot of fun. Collaboration seems to make everything better. All of the students submitted an opening/closing image for consideration and we voted. Veronica's artwork, a single line and a box with an open top was selected. Veronica is one of the stand-out artists of the group and I was in complete agreement with their choice. You can see the students work and the AnimaJam on the website Adriana designed for the class.



Our Film Festival and Award Winners

Every year my animation/media design course ends with a film festival on the last day of class. I invited Lynchburg College professor of art, Siobhan Byrns to be our guest juror. Siobhan is a photographer and digital media expert. I was very happy to share with her the great work of these students. 

Students watching the entries. Far right our guest judge, Siobhan Byrns  Photo: Lynchburg College

Juror's Choice: 

Best Animation:  Veronica
Best Interactive Project: Xavier
Best Art: Rachel
Best Composer Studio Project: Ezzy
Best Overall Project: Eli

                   Veronica checks out Ms.Potato Head, ah, her "Govie" for Best Animation.                            Photo: Lynchburg College

Students' Picks

Best Animation: Daniel
Best Interactive Project: Veronica, Ezzy, Xavier
Best Art: Rachel
Best Composer Studio Project: Ezzy
Best Overall Project: Veronica


Congratulations to all of our winners. Those five students who received the Juror's Awards received the coveted "Govie".

Eli and his Govie for Best Overall Project  Photo: Lynchburg College

Take Away

1. Working with smart, focused students is tons of fun.
2. I love sharing information and watching it blossom.
3. Do things differently next time. (watch for my next post).

Students, stay in touch. Parents, support your students and buy them hardware and software if you can and you know they will use it. Lynchburg College, Prof. Danny Cline is an amazing person who puts his heart and soul into this program. We are all lucky that he does.

Sandbox Summit 2013 SumUP

Sandbox Summit
Cambridge MA 
April 15th and 16th, 2013

Weren't able to attend? Here's an overview of the speakers, events and highlights. I tried to be brief, but this conference was delightfully content rich. Just the venue itself was a treat. Most of our sessions were in the Stata Center on the MIT campus. The campus is a stunning array of fascinating architecture, the Stata Center designed by Frank Gehry one of the most dramatic.

Stata Center, MIT  Architect: Frank Gehry

1.  We were welcomed by Scot Osterweil, Creative Director of the MIT Education Arcade. This was not the first Summit and Scot and the founders Claire Green, Wendy Smolen have obviously developed a great working relationship to produce there events. The Arcade is involved in researching game play and creating games for enhanced learning.

2. Andy Clayman, Creative Director, Avenues: The World School
In the Beginning: Building creativity from the ground up
http://youtu.be/K0dIrjalP8w 
Avenues: The World School is a private school with a campus in Manhattan built from the ground up to create an environment that facilitates learning, creativity and preparation for life as a global citizen. Numerous YouTube videos are available about the campus and the philosophy as well as Clayman's presentation.  As they describe on  their site, "Among the most distinguishing features of Avenues is the concept of one school with 20 or more campuses in major cities around the world. Once realized, this system will allow fluid exchanges between campuses of students and teachers, as well as a full range of interactive collaborations." Stunning physical space, enlightened philosophy only down side is very expensive tuition. How can this be modified and adapted for a wider audience?

TAKE AWAY:  Sure, we have the brain power to come up with an kick-ass school but at a price that puts it out of reach for the 99%.

BEST LINK: Introductory video 

BONUS Surprise:  Sandbox Summit gave all of us a $50 certificate to donate to the teacher of our choice on Donors Choose.org. Katie Bisbee gave us some background information about the organization. Such a wonderful expression of the best of human nature on all levels. I used this gift card to support Mrs. Miller's classroom at Perrymont Elementary School here in Lynchburg, VA and Mrs. William's class at J M Hanks High School in El Paso, TX.

3. Margaret Robinson, Managing Director, Hide & Seek 
New Games/Old Rules: How we play today
I was interested in attending Sandbox because I am not a gamer. I want to have a better understanding of the value of games in an educational environment. Margaret talked about games as collaboration, inspiration, exploration and tools for sparking the imagination. Games as vehicles for creating community and games as a challenge to learn a system. For games to work, they need to be dynamic, intimate, artificial (too much like work if they aren't) and competitive, even if against yourself. This was one of my favorite sessions.

Two of their products really caught my attention.  Tate Trump is a very cool in-museum app (Tate Modern, London) that prompts visitors to collect images from the collection on their iPhones and try to outdo other players.  The criteria for the games?  If pitted against each other, which objects or people (represented in artwork in the museum) would do better in battle?  Which images best communicate exhilaration, menace or absurdity. I see their criteria as a bit off the wall, which of course makes it more interesting. Predictable would have been....well, predictable. I'm curious about their process on developing this game. I suspect it is lots of fun to play and popular.  

Another game series Hide & Seek created is 99 Tiny Games. Their objective was to make inclusive competititve events that everyone could enjoy during the 2012 Olympics in London. They came up with a scheme that placed game instructions in 99 locations around London. I checked out a few of the activities, but would love to learn about every one.  Number 61 is The Dum Dum Game, a sight and sound game for two or more players. With a good view of a number of people, one player will say dum, dum in cadence with the stride one set of people they observe. The other game player must pick out the correct set of people that sync with that cadence. Watch this video to see how it all works.

Image of Tiny Games from HideandSeek.net

TAKE AWAY:  The folks at Hide & Seek are brilliant.  Games can bring people together in a unique experience that builds community. There is value in fun and diversion.

BEST LINK: 99 Tiny Games, Wall Street Journal video

4. David Sherwin, Principal Designer, frog design
Hacking How We Learn; Everyday lessons in good design
frog design is a very large design firm with irons in many fires. frog has put a lot of energy into finding ways to use the design process to help communities that are not necessarily empowered with the skills, tools and time to improve their lives.  Their work with "The Girl Effect" was particularly impressive.  The Girl Effect is a nonprofit collaborative movement by various organizations to explores the use of digital media to help girls form community and help each other. They worked with girls in three of the largest urban slums in Nairobi to help them make connections and facilitate change in their communities. The testimonials of the girls were quite moving. They have made available to anyone their Collective Action Toolkit, resources and activities to collaboratively create solutions for community problems.

TAKE AWAY: Hard for me to wrap my head about the wide and diverse range of "products" from a huge multinational company I had never heard of, but very glad to know they are putting their expertise to good work helping girls communicate and understand how they can help each other.

BEST LINK: The Girl Effect

5.  Howard Gardner, Harvard Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education interviewed by former student Carla Seal-Wanner, Director o Education and Curriculum, FlickerLab
A Conversation with Howard Gardner: Creating media for a complex world 
http://youtu.be/g4i4RifZzWk
Gardner has spent his career thinking about the multiple intelligences children bring to learning. He defines these "minds" as ways of learning and processing information; disciplined mind, synthesizing mind, creative mind, respectful mind and ethical mind.  Gardner sees 21st century literacy as being communication plus media fluency.

TAKE AWAY: Shame on US educational system for letting the Finns take "our" research and leave us in the dust.

BEST LINK: Smithsonian magazine article about schools in Finland 

6. Fred Newman, President, Barking Dog Productions
Growing Up Weird: A story told with words and sounds
Absolutely one of the highlights of the conference.  A son of the South, Fred entered the auditorium whirling a musical device over his head and singing. It took me a few minutes to realize that this wasn't someone's idea of a prank. Check out his website, you will get a sense of the flavor of his folk humor and charismatic personality. Sound gets our attention, Fred's certainly did. Fred's advice is to live the story as you tell it and tell it in the present tense.

TAKE AWAY:  Story is first, but sound is second, image is third. Fred is a very cool guy. Talented and not afraid to be who he is. Great inspiration for kids.

BEST LINK: Fred on Sesame Street 

7. Art Smarts: How MoMA inspires creativity in kids
Led by Elizabeth Margulies, Assistant Director of Family Programs, MoMA and Cari Frisch, Associate Educator, Family Programs, MoMA
I had very recently visited the Art Lab at MoMA so there were few surprises with this workshop. The Art Lab is a fabulous resource for families. Check out my recent article about my visit. In the workshop we were given supplies and tasks that were very similar to what might happen in the Art Lab. We played and made art with such props as laminated cut paper and cardboard sculpture. A sad note, it was during this workshop that we learned of the Boston Marathon bombings.

TAKE AWAY: Art Lab and the Education Program at MoMA are well conceived and I will definitely stay tuned.

BEST LINK: Current Art Lab video trailer

8. Geoff Nelson, Co-Founder and President of Cricket Moon Media
From Easel to iPad: The evolution of creativity tools
Geoff recommends these criteria for creativity app design; open ended exploration, play and endless challenges. He references an idea Chris Donnelly presents on his blog that creative freedom and structure have a dynamic relationship.  Too little structure inhibits creativity and too much structure does the same.  There is a sweet spot when structure augments the creative process.

Some apps he recommended are 123D Sculpt; Pitch Painter (very cool composing tool which is described as musical finger paint), Scribblify, Node Beat and STRAVA. The last is an app that lets you map your bike ride as you do it.  Some users have used the app to make art by planning routes that draw recognizable objects on the map.  

123D Sculpt

After Geoff introduced some of his ideas about app creation, we were instructed to break into groups to design an app...all in 15 minutes. Poppy cock I say to myself, it can't be done in such a short period of time. I was proven completely wrong. Following the idea of the benefits of structure, each of the four groups was given a topic for the app we were to brainstorm. The categories were role play, tactile creativity, construction and stories with written words. This was a competition with prizes. Well, the tactile creativity group blew us all out of the water with an idea for an ice sculpture app.  Wow, what a great idea and how much fun would that be?

TAKE AWAY:  Brilliant conceptualizing can happen in minutes with the right structure and mind set. Watch what Geoff and Cricket Moon Media are publishing, especially independent productions.

BEST LINK:  Their Egg Foo You app

9. Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, Co-Founders of Jib Jab Media Inc and StoryBots
Storytelling 2.0
http://youtu.be/G7JaMTRm3sI
I fell in love with these "boys". I already knew I loved their products, they were half of the reason I came to Sandbox. They were charming, savvy presenters and had a wonderful story to tell of persevering, having a solid creative strategy and plain ole hard work. We all know them for their political animated video "This Land is Your Land" from the 2004 presidential campaign.  What I didn't know is that they were on the verge of throwing in the towel right before "This Land" went viral.  Fast forward to today and they have had 80 million views for that video. That was a memorable jolt but they still had to craft a business model that would make money. They hit upon customizing content which allowed customers to use their own images on JibJab templates. Now as fathers and family men, they focus on media for children with their site StoryBots. As I got to share with the brothers as I almost tackled them as they were leaving the Stata Center, I think their book Biggest Pizza Ever is one of the best stories ever. I look forward to reading many new StoryBots.

StoryBot.com

TAKE AWAY: Fun to meet heroes and have them act like they are genuinely appreciative of the admiration.

BEST LINK: Biggest Pizza Ever

10.  Mathias Crawford, Stanford Graduate Fellow, Department of Communication, Stanford University
After the Sandbox: Everything we didn't learn in kindergarten 
http://youtu.be/6S7e2cmUlKI
 A bit brain dead by this time Tuesday afternoon, my take away from Mathias is that the best kind of play requires/encourages attention to the other, as in bebop and jazz. He said his game of choice is Cold Claim. 

TAKE AWAY: Jazz is a collaborative game

11.  Alan Schulman, Chief Creative Officer, SapeintNitro
It's a Brand new World: Moving from storytelling to storyscaping
Alan felt that collaboration was the best creative model, referencing previous speaker Mathias's jazz and bebop references. He described storyscaping as: understanding experience space, ie retaining more from the experience than the story; an organizing or Big Idea, copy, tranform, combine; develop a storyscape and lastly never use a period, always a comma, keep things going.

TAKE AWAY:  Everything is a Remix has found fans on every level. A MUST SEE.

BEST LINK:  Everything is a Remix 

12. Dale Dougherty, President and CEO of Maker Media
Make it Happen: Turning ideas into innovations
http://youtu.be/liTTqgXpDmg
The Maker Movement is changing industry, culture and education. The idea is to change the passive consumer into a producer and an uninspired student into an engaged learner. Dale works to create spaces in schools, communities and online to help kids and adults build, tinker, explore, fail and become creative makers. Huh, this is what artists do... The maker movement is a return to play and focuses on activities that build confidence. The Maker Mindset is interdisciplinary, interacts with others and is playful. He pointed out, and I concur, we live in a time of tactile deficiency. Dale left us with this thought.  You can learn to do anything.
TAKE AWAY:  Support local arts programs, artists are makers.  Incorporate more technology into my kids arts programs.

BEST LINK: Young Makers, makers in education

13. Pitch Sessions with Jean Hammond, Learn Launch, Learn LaunchX
Unfortuneaty now I am running on only the few brain cells still firing. Jean Hammond of Learn Launch hosted a number of companies as they pitched their apps for potential funding. School Fuel, customizes apps and resources for schools, referencing Common Core Standards.; BoomWriter for collaborative writing, TimeTribe developed by an anthropologist and OutThink, presenting Tornado Maker to manipulate weather phenomenon. Very solid presentations with Tornado Maker my clear favorite.

TAKE AWAY:  These were robust companies pitching that had invested both lots of time in money to get where they were.

BEST LINK: Tornado Maker Kickstarter video 

20130416  LearnLaunch - School Fuel
http://youtu.be/K9q1eG5KKPM

20130416 Sandbox Summit LearnLaunch - Tiggly
http://youtu.be/6pRdeh6U3UM

20130416 Sandbox Summit LearnLaunch - BoomWriter
http://youtu.be/ZFTrBomMGjs

20130416 Sandbox Summit LearnLaunch - The Time Tribe
http://youtu.be/gsNUg8VtOwE

20130416 Sandbox Summit LearnLaunch - Yummico
http://youtu.be/81gAhbi-U1M

20130416 Sandbox Summit LearnLaunch - Outthink
http://youtu.be/GHim0vl04yA

20130416 Sandbox Summit LearnLaunch - Cognii
http://youtu.be/o7LTpgp_JB8


Kudos and a big thanks to Claire and Wendy for a job well done providing an opportunity to build community and exchange stimulating ideas.

Thank you Scott Traylor from 360Kid.com for the session video.