Creative Computing Club - October 9th 2012

After a few teething problems with moving in to the new venue (i.e. setting up software, accounts all that kind of stuff) fortunately we have got down to some programming, we are a much bigger group now so it is both tricky and nice to take on the new challenge of delivering such technical sessions to a larger group. (see photo)

We are making a top down shooter kind of like a generic tanks game, but some of the students have come up with some very nice alternatives, we have a virus vs. bacteria type game, zombie apocalypse and a few airplane games too.

It is a good mix of different skill levels and ages, the youngest being 10 oldest being 15, some have loads of programming experience some of them none at all.

It was also nice to finally have everyone on the same page, and have everyone working on their own separate game but at the same time helping each other.

I got to see another one of those moments, when you see a student see his or her work come to life and start moving around the screen, they often take more ownership and more pride in their work. It's great and we have a lot more to come.

New start, new place new logo

I am quite pleased to announce Creative Computing Club has returned we are now based at Parkside School, in Ipswich and a sincerest of thanks must be said to all the staff for allowing us to make it our new home.

I have run many workshops with Parkside School and they have always been supportive of the types of projects I run. The main advantage of having the sessions their is that it comes with a full PC and Mac suite, so it doesn't matter if the student has their own computer or not they can attend, making the sessions more inclusive.

Our first session back was just to introduce everyone to everyone else, and outline the years curriculum we will be covering  Game Maker, Processing, Arduino, digital illustration, animation, sound and circuit bending, LEGO Mindstorms and a lot more.

We will also be building up to a big project but that is top secret for now.

Creative Computing Club and Young Rewired State

What we did.

I am really pleased that we have been able to setup a Young Rewired State center for this years festival of code, it is an intensive five days of coding to create new apps, games or webpages using open source data.

We ended up hosting it a Greenfinch Church, in Ipswich the Pastor and his wife are lovely and I am truly grateful for them to allow us to host it there, we could not have done it with out their help. 

 


The Creative Computing Club have met several times for the regular club but this was different as they had to work towards a specific goal and they had to work together, we were also joined by some new recruits who plan to join in with CCC in September.

I really noticed it on Tuesday, they weren't just learning to code, they were also learning to communicate with each other. They were learning about each others skills, strengths and learning how to delegate and at the same time be diplomatic, during this I just sat back and listened to them, I really wanted to see how they would cope and only join in if the needed me. They have done wonderfully well the group aged 10 to15 years old, it is a really difficult thing to do, to plan an activity together and be aware of each others feelings.

Originally we had two Olympic Games based on the BBC's athlete data, one Zoo game based on the London Zoological Data with two more games by participants who are just simply learning to code, but in the end the two Olympic games merged.
 

We had our work cut out for us, none of them have ever made any kind of webpage before, so it was a matter of teaching them some basic HTML first and then, making the games in HTML5 to upload.

The second wonderful thing that happened during the week was just how much they were helping each other, the level of peer to peer mentoring was incredible, they all love working with computers, but it seems they also like to help others. I was able to sneakily listen (and learn) how to mod a Minecraft skin, which I will impress my son with next week. I also got to hear an older brother take his sibling through the first steps of coding in Game Maker and have the patience of a saint while doing it.

We have worked incredibly hard, so much so by Wednesday I had to remind them to take lunch breaks, the hard work however has paid off as we now have four games made over the week, several new coders and now coders having experienced a second programming language in that week. Three of the participants could only stay til Wednesday which make their feat of programming two games in three days all the more impressive.



The Games

Miner Man

My by two first-time coders Miner Man is a two player underground adventure.The two man team had just three days to make it, very proud of them both.

http://pixelh8.co.uk/YRS2012/MINERMAN/


 Stick Olympics

Amazing Physics and using the BBC Athlete data, take a shot and see how well you can do. Choose from several of the top archers in this excellent group effort.

 http://pixelh8.co.uk/YRS2012/STICK/


Granny Zoo

Based on the the London Zoological Society and the idea of an imaginary zoo featuring some of the animals, this a top view interactive zoo adventure designed by a ten-year-old! Make sure you go in the Aquatic centre AMAZING? Works on iPad too!

http://pixelh8.co.uk/YRS2012/GRANNYZOO/

Cheese Man

Cheese Man is made by another first time code, get the good cheese and avoid the bad. This was made by a solo coder, with help from friends, brilliant stuff.

http://pixelh8.co.uk/YRS2012/CHEESEMAN/

By the end of close Thursday we all knew what we had to do, upload the info compile the games upload them, tomorrow on Friday we are going to take it easy, play games, eat cake. I am going to teach them some Xcode in the morning as they have asked to learn about iPad/iPhone development, so we will do that first, but that is it, it is time to relax.

Friday

I arrived bleary-eyed on Friday morning without a pack-up lunch but to several wonderful surprises, one being this amazing array of treats and two being the two wonderful cards the participants and parents had made for me. It was a nice chilled out day. We did a little Xcode development, and wrote up some short diary entries of the our week, it was great fun.

Testimonials

"I have really enjoyed this week at CCC because it has inspired me even more too make games and work with a team of people who are also interested in making games and programming, I have also found out that i'am very good with graphics and ok with code. I would also like to go to YRS next year and make even more games to a high standard, all of the team has worked well on the Olympic Game and i think that it has a very good chance of winning but we will just have to wait and see. My job for this project was to make the faces for the Bios and help out with the game graphics."

"I enjoyed my time working on the stick-lympics game, I made all of the bio's for all the athletes in the game, it was fun. I also enjoyed working with others because they bring different ideas together and makes everything easier."

"I’ve very much enjoyed this week doing the Young Rewired State and it has helped improve my knowledge in teamwork and organisation. I’ve also learnt to use HTML programming during this time and had a brief overview of XCode, which is used to create and simulate Apple product games that you create. Overall, I’ve had a great time and I’ll definitely be back next year for the next presentation." "I have had a lovely time as I have been drawing graphics for my brother who is the scripter for the game ‘stick—lympics’. My brother has been a real help when I had nothing to do he was their multitasking doing not just his game but helping with mine ‘build and mine’ which was very fun!!!

"I have tried to help others with ideas on what we could do and when I get home I have helped Ryan with graphics and ideas on ‘stick—lympics’. Many thanks to matt as when Ryan wasn’t there to help he was and without him we wouldn’t of achieved what we have"

"I have loved the time i have had at YRS im going to miss it so much and i have made A game with help from Tom and Henry and Matt special thanks to Matt."

So there you go!

I am really proud of all of the Creative Computing Club, they have done incredibly well, I look forward tomorrow and when we return in September.

Follow me on Twitter here @pixelh8 or the Creative Computing Club @CCCSuffolk here.

Creative Computing Club and Young Rewired State

I am really pleased to announce that the Creative Computing Club will be entering in to the fun that is Young Rewired State with both our 12 to 16 group and our under 12s group. I have my work cut out for me though as I have just discovered none of them in either group has 1) any experience in web based technology and 2) has never done anything like this before.

 So I have booked a week off work and on the 6-12th of August I will be training them from the ground up. I don't know what we will make but I am certain we will have fun and learn a lot by doing it.

I said there would be cake.

Today was the last session of the Creative Computing Club this time it was the exhibition, with the students showing off what they had been making. The only rule was that their exhibits needed to show off something they had learned while being a part of the Creative Computing Club. Amusingly all of them put forward their Game Maker games they had been expanding on since the Game Maker session, so for many it was a chance for the students to try out to try out each others games.

Unexpectedly and rather brilliantly the students started teaching each other how they did different things in their games, there were many brilliant ideas, but more importantly they were being shared. It also nice to see many have upgraded to the HTML5 version and beyond to start getting their games out in to the wide world.

I have updated the Game Maker gallery here so please check out the screenshots of their games.

This is Joe with his best young scientist award from BT Exact Technologies, it is really lovely he won and even more so that everyone in the group cheered him, which to me really highlighted how supportive of one another this group has become.

I was really pleased to hear from the parents how the sessions had helped the students in different ways, I especially liked how coding has helped one student get over his fear of maths. I could also see firsthand how this group has helped some of the students come out of the shell a bit, show off what they are capable of and begin to help others.

In September we will return, this group will be the "2nd years" it will be their challenge to help teach some of the basics and integrate the new group, thankfully I have complete faith in them to be able to do it.

A Sincere Thank You

Today was the last taught session of the Creative Computing Club pilot scheme we will meet again in two weeks for the exhibition. I just want to say this before the blog goes live to the general public, and that is thank you. Thank you O'Reilly, Rapid Electronics, YoYo Games, Love Electronics and Young Rewired State. Thank you to all of these wonderful people who helped fund the project, and thank you to Peoplefund.it and your excellent service. Thank you to all the Twitterers who tweeted their support. Thank you to Theo Clarke all the library staff at Chantry Library and to Anna Shaw and the staff at the Hawthorn's Children Centre. Thank you to all the participants and parents who took part.

We are going live with the blog now, as there was a mix up with the Bank Holiday / Queens Jubilee dates and we want people to know now. Additionally, I will be meeting hundreds of people over the coming weeks (teachers /parents/students/government) and we all agreed it would be best to let them know what we have been up to by sharing what we have done and exactly how we have done it through the resources that can be found here.

Thank you everyone for your time and support.

I hope you enjoy what you see.

Matthew C. Applegate / Pixelh8
@pixelh8 on Twitter

Creative Computing Club: Week 6 Circuit Bending & Sound

It is just the nature of circuit bending that sometimes you can get amazing results and sometimes you do not, and despite a lot of the toys that we brought in weren't very "circuit-bendable" due to their layout, we did some pretty cool stuff.  We still got on and learned things about sound and and how to automate toys through using the Arduino, we got a rather annoying "edutainment" toy to stutter and change pitch. We edited white noise from a circuit bent toy to come up with a bass and snare drum for a simple drum loop using Audacity and Sony Acid

Circuit Bending is very exploratory (that is why there are no resources to download for the session). It was a simple case of opening up the toys and poking different places with the ends of crocodile clips, while recording it all just in case something interesting happens (and sometimes only happens once), we have a good recording of it.

We now have two weeks off to plan our exhibition pieces for July 10th, 2012. It is an open to the public event where we will be discussing what we did and what we hope to do when we return for the full year Creative Computing Club course in September.

From September we will be going a lot more in depth with our projects, spending four weeks on a subject instead of one off sessions. We will be looking at Arduino, Processing, Game Maker, Minecraft EDU, Scratch, LEGO Mindstorms, .net Gadgeteer, HTML/Javascript and App Inventor, Sound, Animation and more, maybe we will see you there?