CRAFTING DIGITAL PLACES
Netbook Edition
This is Crafting Digital Places, a teaching resource by Oscar Keyes and Luke Meeken focusing on experiencing, making, and sharing digital places. We've taught this content with middle and high school students, in-person, but it could also be used for self-teaching, or for remote teaching. Elements of it could definitely be adapted for use with younger learners, too (making funny characters dance would probably be a blast).
To the left are the modules of the curriculum, and below are the online and software tools we use in teaching it.
This is an adapted version of our original curriculum, designed for use with Chromebooks and Netbooks. Hopefully, it's of use to students remote-learning with those devices. All of the below tools are browser-based and require no installed software.
TOOLS WE'LL USE
The site we use to model our characters (and possibly other objects for your world!). Like sculpting digital clay.
Another 3D modeling site you can use. Like building with digital blocks. You can create an account with a fake email, if you don't have an email address (but write down your password if you do!).
Mixamo is a free, online tool for rigging and animating 3D models. We'll use this to create animated characters for our worlds, and to make animated GIFs.
PlayCanvas is a browser-based 3D design environment used by artists and game designers. It's free to use, though you have to create an account.
Note: Free accounts are publicly viewable, and have limited storage. (In our experience PlayCanvas has been generous in setting up private accounts for educators.)
Photopea is a free, browser-based image editor. We'll be using it to modify and add detail to the textures on our 3D models and terrain.
Screencast-O-Matic is a free browser-based screencasting tool used by video artists, YouTubers, and game streamers. We use it to record walkthroughs of our virtual worlds, and ones made by other people.
* Note: Most of these tools work best in the Chrome browser, and are least effective in Internet Explorer / Edge browser.