Blog the World Cup

We’re going to head across to the blog which we’re running with 32 other schools. Follow the link at

http://www.argentina.blogtheworldcup.net

to see what has already been created whilst you were writing your exams. There is a project to start off with, but besides all signing up as contributors so that we can comment on and write posts which will be published, students should explore all aspects of the Year 7 football blog.

You are encouraged to visit other country’s blogs and comment on the work they’re doing. Our Head, Mr Fear has already made several contributions, so it’s time to catch up, even take over and make the blog your own.

We’ll be doing several fun things alongside the more formal tasks. The first one is to create a video of everyone shouting, “GGGOOOOAAAAAALLLLL” for an online competition. We need to perhaps wait until GCSE and Sixth Form exams are over before we attempt this!

World Cup Football Blog Report

The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the 19th FIFA World Cup, the premier international football tournament. It is scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010 in South Africa. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the culmination of a qualification process that began in August 2007 and involved 204 of the 208 FIFA national teams. As such, it matches the 2008 Summer Olympics as the sports event with the most competing nations.

This will be the first time that the tournament has been hosted by an African nation, after South Africa beat Morocco and Egypt in an all-African bidding process.

Italy are the defending champions. (Wikipedia)

1. Each student needs to choose a team who will be playing in this year’s world cup. There are 32 nations playing.

2. Find out as much as you can about the team. (If football doesn’t interest you, then find out as much as you can about the country.)

3. Topics you might wish to include are: squad profiles, maps, match reports, man of the match votes and any other football related information. Equally, you might also like to include research about the culture of your nation, tourism, history, local celebrities, music and so on.

4. All information will be written up on your blog. Take care NOT to copy and paste information directly from the internet. Always credit your sources, especially images.

5. Have fun!

(Image: Wikipedia)

Week 5: Blogging our Scratch Games

Students will be putting the finishing touches to their Scratch games and writing up their blogs. I think we need a little guidance on writing up the entry. Consider these points:

• Which two games have you completed? (If you completed one game, state how you enhanced the original game)
• How does one play your game – or games?
• What aspects of constructing the game did you find enjoyable?
• What aspects did you find difficult, or chose not to include in your game – and why?
• Do you think others should learn Scratch?
• Would you like to continue with programming and animation in your lessons?

(Image from sourcecreative.co.uk)

Week 4: Blogging about Scratch

As well as finishing off their games, students should start thinking about writing a blog post about their Scratch experience. This is a list of what each student should have completed by the end of our next lesson:

1. At least two Scratch games.

2. If you have spent time on perfecting and developing one game, you need to be able to document this process on your blog.

3. Ensure that you have signed up to the Scratch website and have uploaded your completed game or games.

4. Create a link from your blog post to your Scratch web page so that I can assess your games.

5. If you wish to explore more free programming languages, why not try Alice or Kodu? Don’t forget to write about what you’ve done on your blog!

Week 3: Evaluating Scratch

Students will continue to work on the Scratch projects they started last week.  It is important that we regularly connect back to similar concepts in computer programming such as: • Loops • If/Then conditions • Sequences • Variables • Coordination and Synchronization • Random numbers • Trial and Error. Look at this document to see the skills you’re currently learning.

By studying the skill sets for each of the games, students can check on their learning progress. You are encouraged to move onto the different games so as to learn new skills.

Each game has an extension exercise which you’re encouraged to complete as this ensures that you think a little on your own time – instead of simply copying chunks of code.   Once you’ve completed two of the games from: Shooting, Racing and Pong, as well as the PacMan game, you are to complete the evaluation form. The form encourages you to check the skill boxes where you feel most confident and thereby flags up those skills on which you need to spend more time.

I would also encourage students to expand their horizons and produce a Scratch project which is not a game. Why not try some digital storytelling? Select some examples from the Scratch database of files.

Week 2: More Scratch

More Scratch this week! We’ll be covering the creation of sprites (sharks) which bite and swallow their prey and then counting the total number consumed.  Students have made excellent progress thus far. Don’t forget to sign onto the Scratch website and download some projects. Study the scripts and experiment with them in your own projects. Use the support option from the website if you need help when you’re working from home.

For further experimentation, there are several good tutorials from the learnscratch website. Three main PDF tutorials cover working with sprites, movement and some advanced projects. The site has good video help.

Students should move on now and attempt to create several different types of games. All the games cover basic building blocks in Scratch programming, but in completing several of them, you will be consolidating what you’ve learnt as well as learning new ”code” blocks.

1. There a three videos on making a shooting game, a top down racing game and pong and although they are optional, students should at least try one or two of these. 

2. Students may also follow these instructions for making a PacMan game within a maze. The PDF files are quite large, so be patient when they open. (A big thanks to Mr Williams from Perins School for the tutorial.) Have fun and experiment! 

                                                                                                    

Summer Term: Week 1

This week we’ll begin working with SCRATCH. Scratch is a software application which allows us to make simple and complex programmes for animating objects on screen.

To enable us to experience how prgramming instructions work, we’ll discuss the steps to make a cup of tea. Students should see that there is much careful “step planning” in order to produce this seemingly simple procedure. Scratch works with “building blocks” of instructions which are dragged and droppped into place in order to build up a programme. We’ll look at some examples of Scratch so that we can see what one can create. (Students can log onto the Scratch website and create their own collection of favourite programmes at home. These can also be downloaded and added to.) 

1. Look at this presentation on the concepts of Scratch.

 2. Study the basic Scratch interface.  

3. Once we’ve understood the Scratch interface we’ll construct an aquarium.

4. Next we’ll try some other ideas in the aquarium.

5. Experiment!

(Thanks to Margaret Low & Jean Bodycote for the tutorials.)

Week 9 – 11: CrazyTalk

For the next few weeks we’ll complete a short CrazyTalk project. CrazyTalk is an animation tool for creating talking characters. Students can use an imported image (one of your own) or one of the samples from the CrazyTalk models and make them “speak”. Take a look at these videos to see what you can do. (You should watch these at home) They are of an animated dog and cat. A full list of tutorials, both in online video and illustrative documents are available from Reallusion. These are useful if we don’t want to access YouTube. (TIP: Start from the bottom of the list.)

We will be using CrazyTalk 5 which is a slightly older version of the current one. A big plus is that students can download a free trial of the latest application, or an older version from Reallusion to use at home if they wish. This should enable you to experiment on your own. Of course students should always be wary of downloading software, but CNET has a good reputation. Always ensure that your computer system is compatible with the requirements of the product.
 Lesson One
1. Open up the CrazyTalk application once you’ve logged on.
2. Navigate to the internet and search for a full face image. Save this. (It would be better if this had a closed mouth.)
3. Follow the instructions from ” Basic Face Fitting” from Step 1 to 9.
4. Then add “Natural Eyes and Teeth“.
5. Finally complete the “Face profile and Stand-By Motion” tutorial.
6. Experiment!
Remember:
a) That video help is available from the Reallusion website on EACH of the tutorials.
b) That you should add your original imported image to the “Custom” window for models.
c) Save your work as a “Project”. You can overwrite this each time you add something new.
Extension: Why not animate a hamburger? Follow these instructions.
Lesson Two
1. Follow the steps from “Handling the Background Image” in order to learn how to customise a background. You might wish to search for an image to use as a background first. N.B. This tutorial is not as easy as it looks!
2. To add speech to your animation you need to click on the SCRIPT option in CrazyTalk. It is quite fun to have your model talk like some of the different suggested options in the template window. The tutorial for speech is rather in depth. We only need to worry about Step 6 from the “Timeline and Emotion Library” at this stage. Students can add custom sound to their models at a later stage.
3. Finally, for this lesson, students should have a look at “Editing and Creating a Custom Script“. This will definitely take some time to get on top of, but it will allow you to create a model whose facial movements are edited to fit a particular character or a specific speech.  During class we will watch this video which demonstrates the facial expressions created by using this tool.

 

 

Extension: Why not create two models which “talk” in one project? See this tutorial on “Making Avatars Interact“

 

 

Lesson Three
1. Spend some time during this lesson on finalising the project. Make sure that it has all the elements you want.
2. Follow the instructions to “Export and Embed into Webpage“. You might find this tricky, but let’s see if we can manage it. Unfortunately we won’t be able to add these to our WordPress blogs as the Flash will be stripped out. Perhaps take a screen shot of your model, save as a jpeg and write up the process with a link to your animation on YouTube?

Acknowledgements to Claire Barnes and her notes from Willow Dene School. 

 

Week 8: More Image Manipulation

We’ll be continuing with work on Adobe Photoshop Elements this week. Students should try and create a light saber following the instructions in the video. Click on the image below.

Image sourced from premierglow.com

Week 5: More on Image Manipulation

Following on from our lesson on logos, we’ll be experimenting with Adobe Premier Elements and creating many different types of images. I’m sure students will find this activity fun! I thought it would be an idea to have a “guest” teacher for this section, so we’ll be following tutorials from Mr Clarkson, who teaches ICT in the North East of England.

Mr Clarkson’s students usually work with several graphic applications and not all of the tutorials for Photoshop are covered. However, GIMP is a very similar graphic application, so students shoud look at these instead. Students do not have to follow the order of the tutorials, although this is advisable because of the level of difficulty. Students MUST complete all of the tutorials in the coming weeks.

Please remember to always us Creative Commons if you’re sourcing images from the Internet. Also remember that if you’re stuck and wanting to move on with a task, you can also use the “HELP” files within Adobe Premier Elements to get ahead.

Click on the image below in order to navigate to Mr Clarkson’s tutorials on Image Manipulation.  

(Image from Flickr Creative Commons: TobyC69)