Exploring Aviary

Felipe Gacharna
- ITA Tech Instructor -

For the October 22nd ITA session, students had the option to join a choice session that explored Aviary. Aviary is a free online set of tools that allow for image editing and creation as well as music editing and creation. In particular, students got to explore the Phoenix photo editor, similar to Adobe Photoshop, the Raven vector editor, similar to Adobe Illustrator, the Myna music creator, similar to Sony ACID, and the Peacock effects editor, which is unlike most programs the students have experienced before in ITA.

All the Aviary software runs in a browser and is free for anyone to use! We used the specialized education version to great success, which allowed us to oversee much of what the students were able to accomplish in this session.

This student was very proud of the work she could do to her photo in a web browser software:

Phoenix (like Photoshop)


Phoenix has many of the same features that students have already learned in Photoshop, including layers, blending modes, filters, and the clone stamp tool, to name a few. In Phoenix, students got to play around with a base image of a hot air balloon that I provided.

Using the hot air balloon image, students were able to duplicate some of the functionality they are familiar with in Photoshop and then take it to another level with the Peacock effects editor.

Peacock (a unique photo editing tool)

You can "push" a layer from Phoenix directly to Peacock, edit the layer in Peacock, and then send it back to Phoenix. Here are some pictures of the edited hot air balloon image as well as a screen shot of the Peacock editor, showing the unique user interface.

These edited balloon images showcase some of what you can do with Phoenix and Peacock.

This screenshot of Peacock shows the "node-based user interface" that the tool uses. It's a rather unique user interface (UI) where the user is provided with "nodes" or blocks which they can manipulate. Nodes can be connected through the little "notches" on the top and on the bottom of each. These "notches" are inputs and outputs. Manipulating the inputs and outputs to each node allows for heavy manipulation of images, and since each node has its own properties that can also be manipulated, the user has a lot of power in creating a desired effect.

Here's another screenshot of Peacock showing the nodes more clearly and some manipulation done to a gradient.

Myna (sort of like Sony ACID or a drum machine)

The Myna music creator allowed students to mix sounds from a large library to create beats. Myna provides a simple interface, with several layers of different sounds and each sound having a track, with beats being on or off for a given beat. Volume can be tuned for each sound as well as for each particular beat, so students have a good amount of power in mixing their beats. Here is a screenshot of one of the beats created by a student as well as an over-the-shoulder picture of one of the students working on his Myna project.

Listen to some beats the students made:







Aviary also provides a Hall of Fame where anyone can look through submissions, as ranked by users. Most of the time, the projects actually allow you to open up the program used to create it so that users can view how the project was created. Students had an opportunity to look through the Hall of Fame to see what could be done with the tools they were using and to help them gather ideas of how they could achieve some effects in their final artifacts by looking through the projects that allowed you to see how they were created.

Back to School Technology Preview...

This year at the IT Academy, students will have the various opportunities to enjoy and learn about all kinds of things!

Here is a list of some of the things we have in store for the Technology Labs:

Poster Mosaic: Each student creates one piece of a whole illustrated poster!
"Campfire Tales": Creative storytelling through digital audio!
Social Justice Social Media: Students bring a cause and learn how to effectively educate others about what they care about!
Self-Portrait: Illustrate your self or your friends in creative ways!
Accessibility and Assistive Technology: Creative journey into how technology can help in many, many ways!

Using AfterEffects in Post-Production: Learn ways to use AfterEffects to adjust the video you've captured and add the subtle visual qualities that can transform the viewer experience. 

Space Text: Moving typography in film using AfterEffects!
Going Green: An exploration of the green movement in technology!
Hack This:  Not that kind of hacking... learn to make technology work for YOU in ways it wasn't necessarily designed for.
Data Visualization: Learn about the unusually fascinating and exciting world of visualizing data!
Audio Equipment Virtualization: Using virtual synthesizers, drum machines, patch cords, and effects racks -- ON A BROWSER! http://audiotool.com/app
Polyvore Magazine Layout: Learn some of the tricks of the trade in magazine page layout, using a super cool and fun website! http://www.polyvore.com/

Commercial Fun! Make short (50 seconds or less) commercials, focusing on storyline and product placement.
How DOES that work? Ever wondered how that worked? Learn some tools to find out!

It's going to be quite a semester! Keep looking out for future updates and see the amazing work of our students as these workshops unfold!

Dear Many Uses Students, Thanks for a Great Audio and Video Day

Ann Tran
- ITA Tech Instructor -

The third day into The Many Uses of Computer Camp started with the students discussing their favorite genre in music. A lot of the students listened to Rock, Oldies, Hip-Hop, and R&B.

Then, they immersed themselves into a free music creation program called "Roc" on aviary.com to compose two measures of rhythm starting with a kick drum, snare, and various other instruments. All of the students, with or without musical background, had their own unique beat. After, they used Sony Acid to add a bass line and record a voice over. In the voice over, the students composed a thank you note to the ITA students and staff for being accepted into the program.

With their audio good to go, the students dived right into Adobe Premiere, a video editing program. After an hour, the students were able to piece the video together with pre-filmed shots of the first couple days of them at ITA!

In only three short hours, the students transformed into music producers and video editors! It was a ton of fun!!

NOTICE: Video coming soon!

Audacity Choice Session!

October 23rd was the first of ITA's new Choice Sessions, wherein the students were put into classes based on selections they made at the beginning of the school year.

I, Paul, taught a class on Audacity, and it was a lot of fun.

In my morning session, the students did very well in getting Audacity up and running on their machines, downloading being an important part of the class since Audacity is free, open-source software, which anyone can download here.

Once the students had everything installed (including the LAME plugin for .mp3 exporting) we listened to some conceptual sound projects, including a nine-person clap performance, written by minimalist Steve Reich, and a Pierre Schaeffer piece from 1948.

Some of the pieces were a little esoteric - more sound than music pieces, but the students got into them just fine, and had some interesting comments about the usage of sound and the messages conveyed.





After that, they were let loose on Audacity, using it to create their own projects, based on sound FX provided to them or anything they could find on www.freesound.org, an internet database full of free sound effects.

Audacity is a great program for just picking up and using, once you get over the inherent plainness of the UI (user interface), and I was surprised by how little help the students needed once they got into the real meat of the assignment.

Different students put together some fun stuff, and everyone asked some great questions about the tools and interface. The afternoon class had some technical issues, at least more than the morning class, which was unexpected. But, that didn't mean that no one got to work! Clara put together a really interesting piece, and Dylan came up with a great concept of background, sci-fi sort of soundscapes.

Take a listen for yourself to some of the students' creations!










~written on 10/23/2010

Glimpse into College (Virtually): Techy Perks

ITA, as a college preparatory program, offers opportunity after opportunity for students to gain skills that will allow them to succeed in the college environment. Often, though, it is still difficult to get a picture of what being a college student would actually be like. So, for our first choice weekend, I (Elizabeth) designed a session entitled Techy College Kid Perks. The class was meant to give students a new view of college student life from the lens of what resources will be available to them when they begin their journey as college freshmen!

We had a nice sized intimate group with 5 students - two of whom were dressed for the occasion! (Marylin Monroe and the Queen of Hearts - this was the ITA weekend right before Halloween) Sitting around a table together, we began to go through the many resources available to UW Madison students. There was a lot of interest! Students surfed on NAXOS, an online music library that we have free access to through the university at the Mills Music Library Website. To make it interesting, one student in particular would type in random syllables and see what music came up! We had some fun selections - from African drums, to Asian strings. Continuing with music, everyone seemed very interested in the music school calendar; they did not know before that the university has so many cool free concerts going on all the time! There is also the option of listening to some of them online.

The next resource that elicited a lot of excitement was the university timetable. It is the complete listing of all classes happening in a given semester, including location and time. The students were very excited to discover they could actually take a tour and go to college courses before they had graduated from high school! I encouraged them to do so!

Speaking of classes, we also talked about how to find and register for classes. Long gone are the days of my mother's college experience, in which she had to run across campus to different departments to register for classes - now everything is completely done online. This is, however, always a very confusing process for new students at a university; hopefully now this group will feel more confident when it comes their turn! The campus map also came in very handy as I shared with them some of my favorite study spots around campus and described where certain buildings are.

Our end of class project was that each student should choose a library on campus - there are almost 50 of them - to research. In our class, we got to look at the Special Collections library within Memorial Library, the Social Science Library, the Geography Library, the Primate Research Center, and the Chemistry Library. Each student prepared a little presentation in PowerPoint on the library they had chosen. It was enjoyable to hear about each library and especially why each student chose that library. Here are some images from Natalie's presentation:

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how interested the students were in learning more about college and preparing themselves well now. And the students left feeling better equipped for the college experience and well informed about ways they can utilize college technology resources now, even while still in high school! And, the resources covered here are only a tiny slice of what's out there!