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.

Computer Security

For the first choice session of the year, a workshop focused on computer security titled Hack This! was offered.  The session began by looking at a comparison of families of operating systems.  A diagram of UNIX and Unix-like systems can be found here.

Here are some of the major topics we covered in class to give students a better understanding of how computer security works, and how to stay safe in a deeper level than we usually have time for...

Windows Password Security
Losing a Windows password happens quite often, especially when the user is no longer a part of the organization, or has simply forgotten the password for the only administrator account on a rarely-used system.  There are several options, which you can research on your own. Our students got to try a few. It was helpful for them to learn just why it's so important to have not only a good password, but other layers of protection as well.

Mac Password Security
Mac has the reputation of being pretty secure and safe, but their efforts to be as user-friendly as possible and building everything on a UNIX platform platform have left some vulnerabilities.
In order to gain access to a Mac with a lost administrator password, the best way is to use the Mac OSX Install disc that came with the computer. There are other ways to secure your Mac and help you to remember your password that the students had a chance to discuss as well, including encrypting actual files as well as the OS.

Cracking file-level passwords
While we discovered that user passwords for operating systems are rather unsecure, password encryption for files can be very difficult to crack. We looked at the differences between methods of password cracking, such as Hash decryption, Dictionary set, and Brute force.  More information on these methods can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_cracking

Students had a much better understanding of how threats to security occur, and they learned the importance of being very careful when storing information, especially sensitive information.

Live CDs
We booted our computers using Puppy Linux and Knoppix, though we discussed the use of even more alternatives, such as Ubuntu derivaties that can run live, as well as BackTrack, DEFT, and MilaX.  A more complete list of LiveCDs can be found here.  These live CDs are ways to boot a computer with a non-functioning operating system and access the hard drive.  They are an important part of any IT toolkit for retrieving data and also running a full virus scan that can check for rootkits while the primary operating system is offline. With these tools, students can learn a really safe way to recover important work they thought they had lost to a virus or other OS corruption!

Internet Security
We took a tour of www.whatsmyip.org to explore some of the information that is passed on to a website about every visitor and ways that one can protect a computer against malicious attacks by testing what vulnerabilities exist.  Using this website, we were able to discuss how to make passwords more secure, geolocation, proxy servers, MD5 checksum.  This also led to a discussion to ports, firewalls and creating a DMZ using a dual-firewall setup.

In the End
Of course, our conversation went to all sorts of places, and our students seemed to learn and share a whole lot about the way computers work, the way to work around that, and most of all the importance of having a better understanding of this still somewhat new frontier of online life.

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!

Prezi: Prezident of Prezentations

Marc Pedone
- ITA Tech Instructor -

The goal of this choice session was to give the students an opportunity to learn about some new presentation tools available.

We started with comparing Prezi to Microsoft PowerPoint by making a presentation of our favorite celebrities, first in PowerPoint and then challenging ourselves to make the same presentation in Prezi. By doing this, we were able to evaluate the pros and cons of each program.

After the students got a handle on Prezi, they were introduced to Prezi Meeting. This feature allows multiple people to collaborate on one presentation at one time from different computers connected to the internet. As a group, they planned out what they would present and how they would do it. On a white board, they planned the best way to present the city of Madison to someone else.

Madison, WI on Prezi

During the next session, students made two presentations. They first presented each other to the class for us to get to know each other a bit more and to familiarize ourselves once again with how to use the program.

The last challenge the students had was to present a place in the world to me. They would be separated in two different groups and use Prezi Meeting as a means to work on the collaborative project.

I feel like this session helped the students realize that there are always other options to almost every program. Sometimes those options are free and even better than the more popular choice. The students shouldn't feel afraid to find tools other than the ones ITA introduces to them. It also showed them how utilizing many tools (technology, speech, white boards, etc.) along with other people can help make very good use of time and resources. Often, students feel like they need to stick with one story, but really it's multiple stories, and collaborations that really inform us best!

Games from Scratch Session - Instructor Reflection

If you read Paul's posts about the first two sessions of our Custom Workshop on creating games from Scratch, you'll notice he points to a third, and final post...

Originally, I was going to do an update on the 3rd day of Games from Scratch. What I would rather do, considering the lateness of this post, is to update with a reflection on how the class went, and my recommendations and urging for others to help take this class into a more fruitful direction.

First off, as inferred in Paul's blog entries on this class, games are easy to create, good games are as difficult as any engineering project. Computer programming can be easy, anyone can take five minutes and print "Hello World" on the screen with a few simple commands. Making computer programs that are able to detect human behavior, constantly assess performance of the players and create an enjoyable environment is extremely difficult. Asking students to try to make good computer games using more advanced programming techniques in three classes, I found out, is borderline impossible. Not for lack of try from the students, as they were all incredibly engaged and passionate about their projects, but because of the time it takes to individually assess each student's performance levels in programming and design, and making a lesson plan that can work accordingly to their needs.

For those who are unfamiliar with Scratch, I urge you to take a look at this website and register. Take a look at a few of the games and the other programs make through Scratch. For those unfamiliar with basic game design, have a look at these interactive programs from Kongregate. Much of what you're seeing in these two instances were shown to the students as part of their curriculum. When we finally had the students modify, not design, their own games, the results were good...but to make them great, we will need to do the following.

1) More class sessions. I've taught this class before, and it has taken well over 12 sessions just to get students thinking about making board games. To get students to make a transition from thinking about games to making games, it will take more than three sessions.

2) Paper prototyping. Many of the best video games have been done previously using paper prototyping. This method of game design helps designers make cheap replicas of their virtual space without the cost, and gives them a vivid representation about what works and what does not work. This video may help provide insight into what I am talking about:



3) Promote the value of failure (reflection). I know that sounds strange, promoting failure amongst the students...but let me propose using a different word for failure that may make you feel better...reflection. You see, unlike standard testing practices in schools, when a student fails, they receive little opportunity to make up for their work, and therefore reflection is rendered unnecessary in the eyes of the student. Why reflect on what they could have done if they can do nothing to change it? Failure as a game designer provides insight into things that are not working, and if the designer is serious enough about their final project, they will change those mistakes because they want a better project. In many of the game design workshops that I have taught, one of the first things you have to do is promote constructive criticism, and teach that failure is not final, but is part of a continuing process to help make that project and that designer stronger.

I know this may sound like an unusual post. But I do take game design, this class, and the idea of collaborative learning quite seriously, and wanted to give you, the reader a honest insight into this process. Please, if you do have questions about game design, this class, or anything in my post, just send me an e-mail at rmmartinez@gmail.com or leave a comment below!

Radio Commercials

Radio commercials are much different than any other commercial or ad because they only get to use sound and utilize the sense of hearing. They must grab the audience's attention without having them see anything, which is quite a feat!

The students first focused on writing a script. They thought about what goes into a script and what they should focus on. They learned some of the main questions to consider when script-writing:

• Who's the audience?
• What's the product?
• What's the message?

As the students worked, they had to think about how they would "set the stage" so that the audience knows where the scene is taking place. To set the stage, you must carefully select what sounds to use to let the audience know where the commercial is taking him or her.

After the students set the stage, the students must say what their product is and the facts that make it the best product available. This is the "meat" of a commercial as it is the most important part for getting the consumer interested in the product.

The last part of a radio commercial is a call to action, or telling the person to buy the product.

This is a sample "call to action" that one student wrote:

"Little Litter Robot! Available for only 5 easy payments of $29.99! So pick up your iPhone and call 1-800-NO-LITTR, N-O-L-I-T-T-R, right now! That's 1-800-665-4887"

The students then got to focus on recording their commercials along with a new competition set-up. Each student all had access the same sound bytes of other ITA students talking about Madison, WI. They then compiled them into a sort of PSA for the city of Madison. Then, each student was to choose a music to create a mood from SoundCloud.

The whole process of making the PSA focused the students on the production of radio commercials. The winner was determined by the ITA Staff, which was Natalia. Her prize was a honorable congratualtions, and her commercial was played before all our guests at the 11th Annual Holiday Luncheon!

Enjoy all the Madison PSAs made by the students:

ITA Students PSAs

The best part about the experience for the students is that although we didn't have time for them to finish both of their commercial projects, at least they know how to make their own all the way from product to script to final production!

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

Video Games and Scratch: Day 2

Hi, Paul here again :)

Today began with a quick review of the concepts discussed on the first day, with students talking once again about game mechanics and dynamics. Terrence was right up front, quickly explaining what dynamics were.

Next, we talked about the games they played last time, and what was fun and what wasn't. Jasmine had played Rock Band, and had a lot more fun than she had initially expected, rockin' out to the music with the best of them!

It was great to see high school students critically thinking about video game play and why video games involve so much thought from the developers, and so many different intelligences from the players.

The review complete, the first exercise was to find a game review online and read it closely, paying attention to how the reviewers talked about the game and how it fit in with the topics we had discussed. Each student took notes on the review and then stood before the class in turn, presenting their review and talking about what they liked and what confused them. Some good points were raised, including the role of the ESRB and how it fits into the gaming industry.

Finally, the students downloaded Scratch, a free open source software developed by students at MIT to teach about programming, onto their computers and checked out the games available at MIT's website. RocketMan was very popular, and they were able to download it and take a look at how it is set up in Scratch. Hopefully, it'll give them some insight into making games with Scratch, which they'll be doing next session!

~written on 9/25/2010

Video Games and Scratch: Day 1

Today was the first day back at ITA, and we jumped in with both feet with the Video Games in Scratch custom workshop. We took the students over to the video game lab in the UW-Teacher Education building so they could get the full experience.

Ryan started them off with a short lecture about concepts behind video game design, starting with Game Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics.

The students were a little uncertain about talking about video games in such terms, but it wasn't long before they started to get into the discussion. Jacob raised some good points about why some games were more appealing than others, citing things like storyline and challenge, and Saige told everyone about her challenges playing Super Mario Kart against her brother.

Next, Ryan showed them the game Braid, and everyone had a great time playing that on the projector so the others could watch. Terrence did a great job navigating the difficult terrain. Way to go, Terrence!

Finally, the students were split up so they could play whatever game they chose form the lab's wide-ranging stock, with the intent that they pay attention to the things we had discussed. With things like mechanics and dynamics in mind, they played Rock Band, Call of Duty, and the Orange Box, enjoying themselves immensely, while learning something at the same time.

All in all, a great day for ITA!!!

~written on 9/11/2010