[Bf-education] cd assets / 1st grader spark

Fri Sep 21 14:35:46 CEST 2012

Hi Robert,

I recently taught a summer camp for grades 2-6.  It was "The Way Things
Work" so I used Blender as an example of how movies and video games are
made.  It's a hands-on course, so I also wanted to get them to use
blender.  This is what I did - it worked well for a class of 10 kids with 2
helpers:

1.  Show a phymec video of bullet physics in blender for motivation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIPu9_OGFgc
(nothing gets kids excited like explosions)

2.  Day 1:  20 mins.  Have the kids add mesh shapes to a scene.  Teach them
to pan, rotate and zoom with the mouse.  (If you're short on 3 button mice,
you'll need to show how to set 3 button mouse emulation in User
Preferences).

3.  Day 2: 30 mins.  Show kids how to add rigid body physics to objects
with a static ground-plane.  Show them how to add a simple material color
as well.  Common gotcha: kids couldn't find Game Engine mode.  Mouse
pointer must be in 3d Viewport for press "p" to start engine.

4.  Day 3: 20 mins.  Practice more physics.

5.  Day 4: 40 mins.  Show kids how to add an actor to a scene connected to
keyboard control using logic bricks.  Kids grasped this surprisingly fast.
One kid added jump and had a game concept of pushing logs around a scene by
the end of day 4.  He also figured out how to mimick explosions by creating
a bunch of objects and placing them in the scene so their collision bounds
intersect.  Press "p" = exploision = happy kids.

Special considerations:
I was working with dyslexic kids who have a particularly hard time with
clutter on a page.  To ease the clutter of the blender UI I
1.  Set the font size to near the maximum (max setting pushes some options
like Game Engine off the toolbar!) in User Preferences.Settings.
2.  I discovered that i could disappear un-needed UI by r-clicking on
panels, choosing "Edit Source" and disabling parts of the python code.  I
didn't get too far with this, but it would be a good thing for blender or
blenderNation to ship a simple GUI option for really young kids.

Overall impressions: the kids were talking about it on the playground and
some advanced students got pretty closed to making a game that "They would
actually want to play".

kesten

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 5:00 AM, <bf-education-request at blender.org> wrote:

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> Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:22:53 +0200
> From: Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Bf-education] A Blender Sponsored Learning Assets CD
> To: gferrop at gmail.com,  Blender Educators and Trainers
>         <bf-education at blender.org>
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> CAOdBB_73PXRqTY095_L1PkGO7AGaDrzMG8AugCJ57e_PvdMrXg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> I am looking for someone with the time to monitor a Blender sponsored
> learning assets CD.
> I would need to check the entries for quality and OK them and help artists
> to understand the open licence.
>
>
> --
> Douglas E Knapp
>
> Creative Commons Film Group, Helping people make open source movies
> with open source software!
> http://douglas.bespin.org/CommonsFilmGroup/phpBB3/index.php
>
> Massage in Gelsenkirchen-Buer:
> http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
> Please link to me and trade links with me!
>
> Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
> http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
> http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/
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> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 03:26:40 -0500
> From: amdbcg <amdbcg at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Bf-education] A Blender Sponsored Learning Assets CD
> To: Blender Educators and Trainers <bf-education at blender.org>
> Message-ID: <505C24C0.9090100 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I would be interested in more details on the learning assets CD - I'm
> working on building a learning library of templates as well.
>
> I am also writing a thesis on teaching  Blender3d/art/computer science
> in classrooms. The first test project is this week.
>   What ideas do you have on sparking a 1st grader's imagination or
> interest?
>   I was thinking of showing previews from BBB, a Blender3d demo reel,
> some gallery objects, BlendSwap, and some animations, then opening up
> templates, change colors in the compositor, and show them how to modify
> basic content and render out a scene. I have 50 minutes to schedule
> around. This is a nice opportunity to educate. Suggestions or ideas
> would be great!(I'm also trying to work with average attention span
> limits  ~ 6-10 minutes per video/demo)
>
> -Robert
> www.robertfornof.com <http://www.robertfornof.com>
>
>
> On 9/21/2012 1:22 AM, Knapp wrote:
> > I am looking for someone with the time to monitor a Blender sponsored
> > learning assets CD.
> > I would need to check the entries for quality and OK them and help
> > artists to understand the open licence.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Douglas E Knapp
> >
> > Creative Commons Film Group, Helping people make open source movies
> > with open source software!
> > http://douglas.bespin.org/CommonsFilmGroup/phpBB3/index.php
> >
> > Massage in Gelsenkirchen-Buer:
> > http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
> > Please link to me and trade links with me!
> >
> > Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
> > http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
> > http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-education mailing list
> > Bf-education at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
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-- 

Kesten Broughton
President and Technology Director,
Solar Mobile Trailers
kesten at solarmobiletrailers.com
www.sunfarmkitchens.ca <http://www.sunfarmkitchens.ca>
512 701 4209
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