Middle School Computers
About Scratch:
Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.
As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.
Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Intel Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Google, Iomega and MIT Media Lab research consortia.
Don't be just a consumer....be a creator! Download Scratch for free and start exploring and creating:
About the Macromedia Suite:
Macromedia, Inc. is the leading provider of cross-platform software tools for web publishing, multimedia and graphics. Headquartered in San Francisco, Macromedia delivers a complete, affordable set of software tools for digital media creation and delivery anywhere. Macromedia's award-winning products for Windows, Macintosh and the Internet are available to business, education, and government customers worldwide in more than 50 countries.
Adobe Dreamweaver, formerly known as Macromedia Dreamweaver, is a professional web development tool that has been around since 1997. It offers a flexible workspace that can be customized to fit the user's needs and integrates well with other Adobe products. It has a robust collection of tools, yet is still easy for a beginner web developer to use due to its intuitive interface.
Adobe® Flash® Professional CS6 software is a powerful authoring environment for creating animation and multimedia content. Design immersive interactive experiences that present consistently across desktops and multiple devices, including tablets, smartphones, and televisions.
Fireworks' user interface is consistent with the rest of Adobe Creative Suite, similar to that of Adobe Photoshop. On Mac OS X, it is possible to display the application in multiple document interface mode or the standard viewing mode where all toolbars float freely on the screen
About Kodu:
Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input.
The core of the Kodu project is the programming user interface. The language is simple and entirely icon-based. Programs are composed of pages, which are broken down into rules, which are further divided into conditions and actions. Conditions are evaluated simultaneously.
The Kodu language is designed specifically for game development and provides specialized primitives derived from gaming scenarios. Programs are expressed in physical terms, using concepts like vision, hearing, and time to control character behavior. While not as general-purpose as classical programming languages, Kodu can express advanced game design concepts in a simple, direct, and intuitive manner.
GoAnimate is the world's #1 do-it-yourself animated video website.
Consumers, educators and businesses all need to create videos. It might be for fun, to make a presentation, to illustrate historical scenes, make a demo video, or produce a piece of professional training. The list of use cases is endless. However, producing video can be difficult, time-consuming and expensive. And sometimes it still comes out dark and blurry, with muffled sound.
GoAnimate was created to minimize this difficulty, hassle and expense. We enable anyone and everyone to create videos quickly and easily, then share them with the world. This is more than sewing images together into a slideshow, or narrating over existing material. You can literally sit down at your computer and produce a professional-looking video from scratch - within minutes - without having to draw or operate a camera.
Our Quick Video Makers offer speed and simplicity. Even a first-timer will be finished in 2 minutes. Our Full Video Makers offer total creative control and the tools to create a richly-textured video, all with drag and drop tools. Our libraries contain tens of thousands of characters, backgrounds and props - with more being added all the time. Our Character Creators allow users to create custom characters, and our import tools allow for the integration of external audio, image, video and flash files.
GoAnimate was founded by Alvin Hung in 2007. He was trying to create a animated video but all the tools were difficult and required him to draw. As a serial entrepreneur, he quickly recognized this as a large and growing problem needing a solution. Since then the GoAnimate community has grown to include several million users. The company has approximately 20 employees distributed in the Bay Area and Hong Kong.
The LEGO Mindstorm series of kits contain software and hardware to create small, customizable and programmable robots. They include a programmable 'Brick' computer that controls the system, a set of modular sensors and motors, and LEGO parts from the Technics line to create the mechanical systems.
The hardware and software roots of the Mindstorms Robotics Invention System kit go back to the programmable brick created at the MIT Media Lab. This brick was programmed in Brick Logo. The first visual programming environment was called LEGOsheets, since it was created by the University of Colorado in 1994 based on AgentSheets.
The original Mindstorms Robotics Invention System kit contained two motors, two touch sensors, and one light sensor. The NXT version has three servo motors and one light, sound, and distance as well as 1 touch sensor. The NXT 2.0 has 2 touch sensors as well as a light and distance sensor, and support for 4 without using a sensor multiplexor. Lego Mindstorms may be used to build a model of an embedded system with computer-controlled electromechanical parts. Many kinds of real-life embedded systems, from elevator controllers to industrial robots, may be modeled using Mindstorms.
Mindstorms kits are also sold and used as an educational tool, originally through a partnership between Lego and the MIT Media Laboratory. The educational version of the products is called Lego Mindstorms for Schools, and comes with the ROBOLAB GUI-based programming software, developed at Tufts University using the National Instruments LabVIEW as an engine. In addition, the shipped software can be replaced with third party firmware and/or programming languages, including some of the most popular ones used by professionals in the embedded systems industry, like Java and C. The only difference between the educational series, known as the "Challenge Set", and the consumer series, known as the "Inventor Set", is that it includes another light sensor and several more gearing options.
Prezi is yet another option for one to use presentation software. Although all these bells and whistles are nice, a well done presentation is still about content and it's important not to lose sight of that.
Students taking Middle School computers will do a quick lesson involving Prezi but content and presentation style will be stressed.
ANIMATION PROJECT:
For this projects students will work in pairs writing, designing, editing and producing an animation movie. This project builds off of some other technology skills covered in the class and expands their skill set to the next level.
Software used:
Windows Movie Maker
Macro Media Fireworks
Audacity Sound Editor
Project 1
