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.

Discover the World of Communication at American University

In July I taught two classes at American University's very extensive summer program for high school students, Discover the World of Communication at their Washington, D. C. campus.  Professor Sarah Menke-Fish founded the program and has been the director for over 20 years. I taught for the second two-week session with nineteen courses offered, including Advanced Scriptwriting  and Video Production, The Film Intensive,  Broadcast Journalism, Media for Change, Speaking for Impact and Nature Photography. My classes were Graphic Design and Animation. I was very impressed with the program and want to make sure teachers, parents and students are aware of this opportunity for future summers.

I had not spent much time at AU in my many years living in the area. It was a delightful surprise to discover this beautiful campus. Our classes were held in McKinley Building pictured below.

Creative Ways to Share Art with Kids: Every Picture Tells a Story

Edgar Degas   The Dance Lesson, c. 1879  National Gallery of Art

Engage Kids with Art: Help Them Find the Story
This concept is a great way to share art with children. As human beings we are hard wired to love stories and actually depend on them for our survival. It's how we share information and cultural values. Degas's The Dance Lesson is full of stories. As a docent at the Maier Museum at Randolph College, helping kids see stories in art is something we do all the time.

Finding the Digital Stories
In developing the app ABC.DC: An Art Alphabet, I selected 26 works of art from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. that are kid-friendly and created an animation for each work. With this piece, I wanted to add delicate lines to show her dancing. This simple animation brings the scene to life and encourages a deeper level of involvement with the image. Does this help you find the story in this painting?

  

Robert Peckham's The Hobby Horse is a slice of 19th century American life children will find amusing and curious. Who are the girls? Who made the hobby horse? What's it like to ride that hobby horse?  My toys don't look anything like that. Some kids may never have seen a hobby horse, especially one like this. The time and place may not interest a preschool child, but what will is imagining the fun of riding such a wonderful wooden horse. This master artwork is courtesy of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

10 Things to Know About iArt4Kidz

iArt4Kidz is a new brand of Kristin Harris Design. We pulled our preschool media products out to rebrand with a name more reflective of our products. We are focusing on iOS apps with a special interest in art and nature.

1. Our Talent

I am an artist. I have been making art for over 40 years. The last 25 years I have worked with some amazingly creative people to produce animated media for preschool kids. I'd like to introduce my team, provide some samples of our work and talk about why we do what we do.

Black Broadway on U: A Living History Experience

I recently had the opportunity to hear Shellée Haynesworth, creator and executive producer of Black Broadway on U speak at Randolph College. Her talk was part of the Sara Driver '77 Digital Filmmaking and Lecture Series, funded by Martha Driver '50 and Al Driver.

 

This fall I had reconnected with Shellée, a fellow member of Women in Film & Video (DC) and was very excited to hear about this new venture. I was very curious to learn what had sparked this multi-platform project to connect today’s audiences to the contributions of prominent and pioneering Black Washington entertainers, educators, civil rights activists, intellectuals, musicians and culturists. What I was to learn is that not only was there a family connection for Shellée, a third generation Washingtonian but also national significance of this community in Washington DC that was centered around U Street.

How YouTube is Advancing Science Education

Kristin Reiber Harris
KristinHarrisDesign.com

Science education is something we can all agree is important. How are producers and educators making sense of the current landscape and helping students learn? Media producers have watched the industry change by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years. In the 90's it was a miracle to get anything to happen on a dial up connection. Now we take HD streaming for granted. Producers get left in the dust if they are don't keep up with the state of the art, all while they get older (even the young ones) and audiences get younger with changing tastes and preferences. These are some of the issues Dan Sonnett, video producer and owner of Sonnett Media Group, LLC discussed at a recent meeting of the The Women in Film & Video (EdCM) Education & Children's Media Roundtable. Dan is a long time contractor with the Smithsonian's National Natural History Museum were is currently Sr. Video Producer and Science Communicator.
 

TV is Broken
Dan set the stage for our conversation by reminding us that TV is broken. He had fascinating statistics about what, why and when kids are access online video. YouTube has over 1 billion users. In March of 2015, YouTube attracted 31.8 million users aged 18 to 24 (98% of the U.S internet users in that age bracket). All this is very important data for media producers. In a nut shell, kids are spending lots of time online and jumping around, probably while multi-tasking. This is not really much of a surprise. How does this relate to education? In addition to teens liking the online video offerings, teachers do too. They provide visual demonstrations or evidence and can clearly dramatize events and concepts. The videos are short which is a good match for student attention spans.

Maier Museum iPad Camp: A Success Story

Five afternoons in mid-June, the Maier Museum at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Va hosted eager and dedicated iPad artist between the ages of 8 and 13 for the first iPad camp of the summer. Surrounded by art treasures from the Maier Museum collection, what better location to inspire students to be creative.

My objective in organizing these iPad camps is to encourage students to become content creators not just content consumers. When I asked the students how they use their iPads, I heard a lot about Minecraft and Youtube. We all know how easy it is to become addicted to the wide range of media at our fingertips with our mobile devices.  My mission: convince students to use their own creative energies and expertise to become animators, storytellers and developers too. Few things make me happier than to see this mission accomplished as successfully as it was that week.

Olivia's wonderful cat with a view of the Flip Boom Cartoon interface.

6 Reasons To Go to iPad Camp

Kristin Reiber Harris

What's So Special About iPad Camp?

I have had the opportunity to work with many kids and adults in a variety of venues exploring the iPad as a tool for creative expression. My schedule this summer includes two weeks of half-day iPad camps at the Maier Museum at Randolph College the weeks of June 15th and June 22nd. The sessions are 3 hours five days in a row, the first week for kids 8 to 12 and the second week for teens and adults. Stay tuned for more dates and venues.

iPad Camp last summer at Lynchburg College  Photo Credit: Lynchburg College

I Can Do That! 2...the Sequel

Kristin Reiber Harris

After over a year in development, I Can Do That! A Kids World Art Game is now available for download from the App Store. Our mission with these art museum apps is to introduce preschool children to kid-friendly global art treasures. Why? 

Our intentions with these apps is to:

1. engage young children with objects that will encourage a life-long love of art

2. facilitate experiencing diverse global cultures at a very early age

3. extend the reach of a museum to families who may never be able to visit

These are the 10 art objects and the four games included in first I Can Do That! A World Art Game.

Check Out These Student Authors and Illustrators Published on iPads

Still feeling the glow of the recent Digital Storytelling Workshop at the Startup Summer Institute at Howard University's Middle School of Mathematics and Science. This program was a collaboration between Global Sleepover and Demibooks to help students develop global awareness and produce interactive books on iPads. Representing Demibooks, I joined Geeta Raj of Global Sleepover for the second week of the camp. The first week she focused on helping the students develop their skills as storytellers and illustrators. She worked with them to craft stories about different countries around the world. I assisted the students with Demibooks Composer Pro. This app for creating apps, let them load their text, illustrations and audio files and add animation and interactivity to their stories and publish their work.

Isaiah King's Cover Artwork

Global Storytelling, iPad Camp and Publishing Student Authors/Illustrators

Kristin Reiber Harris

I joined Geeta Raj of Global Sleepover on Monday, July 28th at Howard University in Washington, DC for the Digital Storytelling Workshop at the Startup Summer Institute

at Howard University's Middle School of Mathematics and Science. This program provided a group of students with the opportunity to explore app design as well as storytelling and interactivity.  I arrived for the second week of the camp on behalf of Demibooks to help the students produce interactive books on iPads. The first week of the camp, Geeta worked with the students writing stories with a focus on global adventures. Each story that took place in different countries with characters from that country featured in the stories.

I was very impressed with the campus. Undergraduate Library, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Lessons Learned from Seven iPad Camps

This camp was my 7th iPad Camp of the summer but my first specifically as a trainer for Demibooks. Emboldened with a wealth of experience working with students 8 to 13 (some adults too) I had a grasp on what could be accomplished in this short period of time. Earlier in July, I spent two weeks working with students at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia. Our sessions were only 3 hours long for four afternoons a week. The students had been able to write, illustrate and produce stories that incorporated a variety of interactive components and animation. I appreciated that we would have a lot more time with the students at this camp and I saw the benefits of this extra time.

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.

Getting Ready for iPad Camp

Kristin Reiber Harris

Yeah, iPad Camp!
I am very excited to be preparing for four sessions of iPad Camp sponsored by the Friends of the Daura Gallery at Lynchburg College. There will be two 3 hour sessions a day, the first for students 8 to 12 years old and the second for teens and adults. Each camp lasts for 5 days. I have been pleased with the response and registration and am really looking forward to getting things rolling on Monday afternoon.

Lynchburg College Dell, Lynchburg, VA  Credit:Imaginegod614 Wikipedia CC

My objectives for the camp are primarily three fold:
     1. introduce some well-tested tools for creative media production; 
         animation, video production and interactive books 
         It's important to remember this is about process, not everyone will have 
         a completed project at the end of 5 days. However, they will know how to do it.
     2. support an exploration of those tools through the students original projects
     3. walk the students through the steps professionals use to create media; 
         a good idea, planning with storyboards, asset creation and production
         (Learn about my work as a professional media producer on my website.) 

The Jazzy Letter J

A whole new way of looking at the alphabet....letters, animation, music and great art. Coming soon to the App Store, ABC.DC: An Art Alphabet. Check out Jazz J...who knew?

Henri Rousseau,The Equatorial Jungel,  image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Kristin Reiber Harris is a media producer specializing in educational media for kids, with a focus on introducing young children to wonderful art from museum collections.  Learn more at KristinHarrisDesign.com.

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.

Life Wrangling 31 iPads

Kristin Reiber Harris

Last May I was invited to be the technology coordinator for the eArts Initiative at Lynchburg College. I develop iOS apps, have been an adjunct professor in the Art Department at the college and had actively pursued iPads for my Va Governor's School of Math, Science and Technology media production class. I was thrilled to be involved. The result, thanks to the Virginia Foundation for Independent College and those at LC who procured the grant, was an array of technology tools for education which included the 30 iPads I would shepherd through the Fall semester. (The 31st is my own.)

As a media producer I had found iPads wonderful tools for creating and distributing media. I was looking forward to being able to share this enthusiasm with my fellow faculty members at the college, students in Gov School, LC students and the kids who participated in the art workshops at the Daura Gallery.

My New Best Friends: An App is Born

I want you to meet a few of my new best friends. I have immersed myself in my first iOS app project which just yesterday became available in the App Store. I have been creating educational media project for kids for many years, but app production is new for me. I had some fits and starts before I found the right production environment for me, Demibooks Composer Studio.

The App

Duck Takes A Ride: An Art Story is a narrative about 8 ancient animals from China and Egypt. I found the images first and the story evolved. I mean really, when you have a gorgeous horse and a cart, something special has to happen.

 

Artist: China, Sichuan province
 1st century/2nd century CE
China: Eastern Han period (25–220 CE)
Portland Art Museum

Why Chinese Bronzes?

I wish I could remember when I fell in love with ancient Chinese bronze sculpture. It's was a long time ago. Thirty years ago I made a ceramic copy of a ding, a ceremonial vessel. Not exactly like the one below, but similar.

Brooklyn Museum   Ding   Cast bronze with inlay China  12th-11th century B.C.E.

I'm not even sure if at the time I really understood what it was. I just knew there was something about the object that captivated me.  As I learned more about ancient Chinese art I discovered a cache of animal bronzes that I knew kids would love.

From the Freer Museum in Washington, DC.

Where are the objects?

I started collecting images of ancient animals from a various museums that allow certain images in their collections available for use in media projects. Some images were put in the public domain while other institutions indicate there are no known copyright restrictions. The Brooklyn Museum, the Portland Art Museum and LACMA collections played a pivitol role in this project.

It was searching the archives of the Brooklyn Museum that I realized I wanted to include animals from ancient Egypt with the Chinese bronzes. What's not to love about this adorable hedgehog?

What Other Animals?

A bixie is an mythical Chinese lion-like animal also known as a chimera. She has wings and apparently was brightly painted at one time. I love her expression and the idea of including a fantasy animal in the menagerie.

This faience monkey "lives" at the Brooklyn Museum. She can do amazing things with her tail, which is almost hidden in the sculpture.

 Stay Tuned to Meet the Rest of the Gang.

Download this app the let me know what you think. Share it with the children in your world.

Demibooks: iPad App Development Solution

Soon to be released first app in artEpants series, Duck Takes A Ride

One on my dreams for many years has been to animate great master art works. Not all of them of course.  It still sounds rather ambitious. In fact when I started my work in animation over 20 years ago, the very first projects I worked on were animating my own art. It was a natural segue into the kids educational media that was to become the heart of my animation career. The culmination of that work was my wonderful relationship with HBO Family and the series of interstitials I worked on with them and the bilingual animated DVD I produced after that experience.

 

                         sample from "I Want to Be" series for HBO Family

Fast forward to today's technology landscape and iPads have significantly changed the way children access media. This has been a very exciting development that drew me back into the media production after spending a number of years focusing on my own fine art work. What followed was the search for the right tools for this new landscape of tablet delivered interactive media. Flash was the obvious choice for me because of my long history as a user and teacher of the software.  My skills as a programmer are limited and the requirements for iOS development with Flash were limited for me IF I wanted to be directly involved in the programing.

First Flash Project: ABC Art programmed in Flash with associate Heather Larkin

At first I didn't really understand why it was so important for me to be doing the programming.  I was working with my good friend Heather Larkin, talented animator and skilled programmer.  In our months of exchanging files I realized that my creative process for developing was really limited by not completely understanding how the code was written. I realized it would actually facilitate the creative process to think in code as I was conceptualizing my project.

Enter Demibooks with it's suite of app development software.

Demibooks

I read a post by Lisa Goldman of Women in Animation about Demibooks Composer. Demibooks had done a presentation for the group. I checked out their site and was very intrigued. 

What Demibooks offers is a book related format for developing iOS apps that allows for the inclusion of both animation and video but that has simplified the programming for even kids to use. (a theory I will test this summer) Predefined scripts are available in easily accessible language.

They also distribute books made on Composer through their own curated store, Demibooks Storytime.

 

The biggest initial stumbling block for me was that the iPad is the production tool.  I am used to working on my Mac Pro tower with 2 monitors, etc. This just seemed wrong. However, it didn't take long for me to realize the one major payoff for this arrangement. With the tap of one button I am proofing my app real time on my iPad.  None of the foolishness of Provisioning Certificates, etc that were required when I was working with Flash.

After about 6 months of working with Composer and getting to know the company and developing community I am very happy to have my eggs in this basket. Demibooks has been extremely responsive to users questions and requests. There is a forum through GetSatisfaction for communicating with other users and the Demibooks staff.

First in my app series Duck Takes A Ride as seen in production mode on Composer Studio

As I mentioned previously, an understanding of the capabilities of the software and how it "thinks" are really pivotal in using it to best advantage. I have reached a comfort level now where I can explore possibilities that will enhance my creative process. It's very much like a puzzle or understanding a system. The more simple processes are combined the potential grows exponentially.

Interest in Demibooks is growing fast. Lynda.com did a documentary about Stacey Williams, illustrator, publisher and educator about her work with Demibooks and her e-publishing course at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD).

I am indebted to the crew at Demibooks for what they have made available to media producers. They have been accessible and very responsive to adding functionality that their users would like. The upgrades I have seen since I have been working with Composer have been frequent and significant. The new app Composer Share, which allows me to send a Read Only version of my working document to beta testers and clients is a huge plus and really necessary for the software to be a viable production tool.

If you are working in Composer Studio, please share your experiences. 

Art To Tell Stories and More

I am heading off to NYC in a few days.  My trips to New York has been exciting and formative over the years. In my family, it was the tradition that our father took us on a short trip to NYC when we were 10 years old.  I am especially anticipating this visit because I have two destinations that tie directly into my current app development; the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

• China, Wine Vessel (Zun) in the Form of a Goose, 206 B.C.E.-220 C.E. Bronze, 11 1/2 x 6 3/16 x 17 1/2 in. (29.2 x 15.7 x 44.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum photograph

Recently I discovered that the Brooklyn Museum has made available for download and use many images from their collection. These images are available with a Creative Commons-BY license. This means I am free to adapt their images and share them with this license as long as I credit the museum. What a boon to media developers.  Congratulations to the Brooklyn Museum and other institutions who are doing the same.  The Portland  Art Museum is another resource I am tapping for this project. Both the Brooklyn Museum and the Portland Art Museum have extensive collections of ancient Chinese and ancient Egyptian art.

China, Eastern Han period (25–220 CE),earthenware
The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Collection of Early Chinese Art, Portland Art Museum

Since my trip to China in 2011, I have intensified my study of Chinese art history.  The Asian Art Museum (in San Francisco) has a very extensive offering of art history lectures on iTunesU.  At one point I realized I had watched over 45 hours of lectures about Chinese art history focusing on the Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han dynasties. I am fascinated by the early bronze sculpture and especially intrigued at how accessible they are for children. There are so many animal objects that reflect not only a realism and love of the creatures, but are humorous and delightfully entertaining. Case in point is the goose at the top of this article and the hedgehog below. It does add to the mystic for me that these objects were made over two thousand years ago.

Egypt, Hedgehog, ca. 1938-1700 B.C.E. Faience, 1 5/8 x 1 5/8 x 2 13/16 in. (4.2 x 4.1 x 7.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 65.2.1. Creative Commons-BY

My project, which is designed for very young children, involves finding a selection of these animals and bringing them together in a story with animated components that bring the animals to life. I am working with sculpture from ancient China and ancient Egypt. Why these objects for this age group?  I am a great believer in introducing children to artwork from around the world to better understand of our shared history, our shared human experience.  I am also a great believer in starting this process as early as possible.

ABC Egyptian Art from The Brooklyn Museum of Art

The first book I bought for my daughter when she was a baby, ironically, was the ABC Egyptian Art from The Brooklyn Musueum. I was surprised to discover that it is still in print, originally published in April of 1988, a few months after she was born. 

I am making connections with the Education Departments at these museum to brainstorm about how to add to their efforts to make their collection available to children everywhere, regardless of whether they can come to the museum in person or not. As an educator and artist living in a small community in Central VA (after years in the DC area) I seek out those arts institutions that are invested in making their collections and exhibitions available online.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, another greatly anticipated destination this trip, has innumerable online resources for accessing their collection. Their new series 82nd & Fifth is a collection of short videos of artwork selected by curators to document work that has been significant to them. There are currently 16 in the series building to a total of 100. While at the Met I will be spending a lot of time in their Chinese galleries. 

I will also visit the MoMA Art Lab.  Not directly related to my current project, but I am looking forward to meeting Cari Frisch at the Sandbox Summit in April and would love to drop in and say hey while I am there.  I am a huge fan of MoMA's online presence. Their exhibition On Line with this virtual component has been a part of my college level drawing curriculum for a few years.


I am finding a robust and diverse collection of objects to incorporate into stories that introduce young children to artistic expression that has been a part of the human experience for thousands of years. This makes me very happy.  I am looking forward to sharing these stories soon.

Beautiful Animation about Caring for Children

Through one of those circuitous routes one takes on the web, I landed on a video presentation by Sir Ken Robinson on the Dalai Lama Center YouTube channel. Robinson is very humorous and entertaining and I considered embedding that video.  I recommend it but it's 45 minutes long and in some ways preaches to the choir.  His entertaining presentation style is an inspiration, I'm sure my students would appreciate it if I were that funny.However, there are two things I do want to share now, information about the Center and the embedded animation link below.

Homepage from the Center website

I was thrilled to discover the Dalai Lama Center.  Located in Vancouver, BC it was established in June of 2012 to facilitate dialogue about supporting communities that nurture compassionate, socially-responsible children. The programs are crafted to educate, convene, advise and apply research. I think the Dalai Lama is one of the greatest living spiritual leaders today. I feel very fortunate to have heard him speak on two occasions.  It is very exciting to find another venue he has established to share information about not only his spiritual tradition but wisdom from like minded individuals.

On second search of the numerous video presentations available from the Dalai Lama Center, I found this beautifully animated 2 minute piece. As an animator and designer I especially appreciate the creativity that has crafted this poignant and relevant piece.  I hope you will take a few minutes to enjoy it.