Here are some photos from the event:

Lunch at Art Gene

Watching the presentations

Greengate with their certificates

A big round of applause for everybody!

Since we saw them last, many of these Barrow Scratchers had been busy showing their friends, families and even their teachers how to make presentations, movies and games!

Thanks to:
Staff and pupils at Barrow Island Community Primary School, St. James C of E Junior School, Ormsgill Primary School and Greengate Junior School
Rachel Holmes
Art Gene Gallery
Neutral Spoon

Happy Scratching!

Barrow Island Community Primary School

St. James’ C of E Junior School

Ormsgill Primary School

Greengate Junior School

The group worked hard to develop their ideas:

Greenhouse

Party shed

And then got to grips with turning those ideas into (virtual) “reality”:

Working things out

Helping each other

It was great to hear that some of them has been so inspired by our previous visit that they’d already downloaded Scratch and started using it at home. I also heard that a couple of dads were getting in on the act as well, and were busily programming Scratch Pong!

The Greengate group came up with some clever and engaging ideas – here are a couple of unedited projects. Check out the “sun/moon” switch and the exciting new performance stage!

NB: Most of the projects created in the workshops were interactive. Click the green flag to start. You may then have to click on sprites or press keys to trigger the action.

Stage

Sun and moon

Well done everybody!

Here are some photos of the project plans:

Alien teachers

Playground or fairground?

Here are some photos of the group:

Figuring it out

Working on the projects

This group had some really creative ideas – from ferris wheels and trampolines to crazy “drain parties” underground!

NB: Most of the projects created in the workshops were interactive. Click the green flag to start. You may then have to click on sprites or press keys to trigger the action.

Drain party

Trampoline

Well done everybody!

Thinking hard

Working with Scratch

One of the lessons we learnt from the previous session was to encourage the pupils to draw their own characters wherever possible, rather than relying on Scratch’s “clip-art”. This produced a more personal feel.

The St. James’ group also discovered the delights of the Pen command!

Here are a couple of examples of unedited projects.

NB: Most of the projects created in the workshops were interactive. Click the green flag to start. You may then have to click on sprites or press keys to trigger the action.

Robot world

Flower walk

This project is interesting because the pupils who created it demonstrated that they were acquiring the programmer’s “what if?” mindset (“…but what if I can make it do this? And then that?”) Whilst they couldn’t handle all the scripting themselves, the ideas they asked us to help them with grew progressively more sophisticated.

Well done everybody!

Within the theme of the project, there was space for individuals to explore their own interests – whether football or fashion design.

I’ve linked to a couple of unedited projects, so you can see how far the pupils were able to progress in the space of a day.

NB: Most of the projects created in the workshops were interactive. Click the green flag to start. You may then have to click on sprites or press keys to trigger the action.

Football

Robo-teachers

Well done everybody!

Each of these workshops followed the same schedule:
- introduction to Scratch (working through the “Getting Started with Scratch” document available on the Scratch website).
- project planning
- project execution
- project review and close

The theme for all the projects was “One Hundred Years from Now.” We asked the pupils to visualise how the school environment might have changed by 2109. Between the INSET day and the project sessions, the participating pupils had taken photos of areas of their respective schools which they considered to be unfit for purpose in some way – be it “unwelcoming”, “boring” or “ugly”. These were used as the basis for the various projects, some of which were undertaken individually, others of which were completed by two or more pupils working together.

We also prepared a “prompts” sheet to aid ideas generation and provoke discussion. Questions included:

What’s the world like in 2109?
Think about: climate change…technology…war…animals in danger
What’s your school like in 2109?
Think about: the buildings, the grounds, inside the classrooms, what they are made of and what they look like
What things from 2009 would you keep?
Think about: where you enjoy being now, your favourite place or your favourite things to do
What things from 2009 would you change?
Think about: what don’t you like about your school building and the school grounds? Why?
What are children doing at school now?
Think about: different subjects, teachers, computers, pens, books, sport, school uniform, school dinners

Projects were planned with pencil and paper, with an emphasis on producing annotated, working drawings rather than “pretty pictures”. Working within a short timescale, the emphasis was on creative thinking and developing a basic level of confidence and competence with using Scratch.

We spent an hour at each school, during which time I introduced both myself, by showing some examples of my work (the animation “Man-Eating Zombies…In Blackpool!” proved especially popular!), and also some of the concepts underlying Scratch.

We did this by asking the pupils to “act out” Scratch instructions, such as…

“Walk ten steps”

Then…

“Walk ten steps….forever”.

But what happens when you reach the wall?! You end up marching up and down on the spot, unless you include an additional command…

“When you reach the wall, turn around.”

We also used a tambourine to introduce some sound-related code (“Play five times!”) and elected one pupil as  ”Mouse”, who could tell other pupils to carry out their own set of instructions by touching them on the shoulder. Not forgetting of course the two pupils who were in charge of all the action – one with a green flag and the other with a red “Stop!” sign. Translating the abstract world of code into real-life events helped the pupils to begin to understand the logic of computer programming.

For inspiration, we showed a selection of  Scratch projects already online – works produced by both children and adults, including animations, games and quizzes:

Dress Up
Do You Know Europe?
Day Dream
Skeleton Poser

…and left each class fired-up and ready to go!

The project kicked off with an INSET day on January 19th at Art Gene Gallery in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, presented by the Project Artist, Sally Olding (that’ll be me then).

First off, I showed the teachers some examples of animation-based works that I have created previously, utilising various techniques (Flash, stop-motion, collage, model-making, drawing, iMovie, interactives, etc) and working with a wide range of different groups (children, older people, adults with learning disabilities, service users at a drug and alcohol rehab centre).

Within the context of the classroom, animation can become a complex and unwieldy task, so I outlined a methodology for planning, delivering and evaluating animation projects effectively. This can be broken down as follows:

- research
- ideas generation
- storyboarding
- identifying tasks
- resource generation
- authoring/programming
- polishing and testing
- release
- feedback

Next, we looked at the many different types of software packages that are available for creating both animation and animation resources such as imagery and sound. I was particularly interested in flagging up some of the great free/open-source goodies that are available – ideal for use in schools, where industry-standard apps may be neither appropriate or affordable. These include:

Pencil (vector animation)
Blender (3D)
GIMP (bitmap imagery)
Audacity (sound)

I’d decided to use Scratch for the Fly Art Barrow project. Scratch is an application developed by MIT for young people aged eight years old and above. It can be used to create animations or interactives. Whilst Scratch’s programming language contains many of the elements found in “traditional” programming environments, it has a logical “click-together” structure and “plain English” syntax that makes it very easy to use. Projects can be shared on the Scratch website or embedded into other websites (much in the manner of Youtube videos). Scratch is cross-platform, free to download, accessible and offers extensive support via online resources and discussion boards. All of these reasons influenced my decision to focus on using Scratch in this project. This would be my first time using Scratch in a project, so I would be learning too!

So then it was time to get “hands-on”, with a practical introduction to Scratch! The concepts we explored were exactly those which the pupils would be getting to grips with in the coming weeks, such as event handlers, repeat loops and conditionals – with just a little “extra” in the shape of an introduction to variables (making algebra so much more exciting).  This knowledge is really all that’s required to start making Scratch animations and interactives – it’s amazingly intuitive and immense fun.

We rounded off the day by devising lesson plans that utilised Scratch. I asked the group to imagine that their pupils were already familiar with the Scratch environment, so we could concentrate on exploring how Scratch could be used across the curriculum to provide a rich and engaging learning experience.

The Audible Picture Show is an international, touring collection of audio works created by a diverse range of people including visual artists, film makers, animators, radio makers, audio artists, sound designers, writers & musicians.

Each show is compiled from the growing archive of 100+ unique audio pieces, this one includes the new audio commission created by local students who recently took part in the ‘Fly Art Project’ with Storey Gallery.

Each student who took part will have 5 free tickets for themselves and their friends and family to attend. These will be handed out shortly. Alternatively tickets can be booked for £5 (£4 concessions) by calling The Dukes box office on 01524 598500.

This event also provides and opportunity to see the outcomes of the Manchester and Barrow Fly Art projects.

For more info visit the Storey Gallery website