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Baird Nerdfighters Club |
BMS Nerdfighters played with the iMotion app to create stop motion shorts.
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This year Nerdfighters will run a bit like summer camp. Nerds sign up for the themed sessions they want to attend. There will be meetings open to everyone roughly once a month. If you have not turned in a purple paper with your choices please see JFunke ASAP. Session participants will be announced on Wednesday October 14.
Session 1: Making Videos October 21, 28, November 4, 18, December 2, 9 Session 2: Electronics and Coding January through March (dates TBA) Session 3: Nerdy Crafts April through June (dates TBA) Open Meetings roughly once a month This post comes to you in four parts.
Part 3: Nerdfighters Needs to Change It's that time of year when we dig into more complex projects. It's wonderful that the group is so popular, but projects are impossible to do with 40 chatty nerds. JFunke proposed splitting the group into two parts, which would happen on different days: Social Nerdfighters and Project Nerdfighters. Social Nerdfighters would be less structured. We would start with a VlogBrothers video, but then nerds would be free to socialize and work on whatever they want. Project Nerdfighters would be much more focused and would require nerds to sign up for specific projects and commit to attend for those meetings. Projects would include robotics, e-textiles, t-shirt printing, and more, which require purchasing expensive supplies. The nerds in attendance used a Socrative poll to let JFunke know whether they wanted to only attend Social Nerdfighters, only Project Nerdfighters, or attend both. Only Social Nerdfighters: 2 Only Project Nerdfighters: 9 Both: 21 Surprise! Behavior at meetings does not suggest this, so maybe instead of separating them we should make meetings 90-105 minutes instead of 60 minutes. That allows for 20 minutes of hangout time and a full hour for the project. We will vote on that at the next meeting. Longer meetings or two days a week? Part 4: Polymer Clay Pens We used tutorials from PuddingFishCakes (a Nerdfighter YouTuber) on how to use polymer clay and a tutorial by doodlecraft on Instructables.com for the designs. Here are some images that inspired us from that tutorial: And examples of Harry Potter style wands
Current BMS Nerdfighters Josh, Emily, and Imani, and former BMS Nerdfighter (but always a Nerdfighter) Gabbie co-lead a workshop with JFunke for school librarians on how to start a Nerdfighters club at the MA School Library Association annual conference held at UMass Amherst on March 2, 2015. The students were very articulate speaking about what it means to be a nerd/Nerdfighter and about their personal connection to the annual Project for Awesome. They answered many questions while helping the librarians make duct tape bow ties and they shared ideas for what might work in other libraries. After the workshop everyone ate in the dining commons under lights that look like sushi surrounded by amazing food. A few of them are ready to enroll at UMass right now.
While we say goodbye to Nerdfighter Kate who is moving away, we say hello to a grant that will purchase cutting edge (well, maybe dull edge) technology for the library. And of course since the Nerdfighters meet in the library, it's really for Nerdfighters. Nerds broke into three groups: one to have a goodbye party for Kate, one to make lists of technology desires for the library makerspace, and one to work on logo design.
The Scholastic book fair is next week so we made characters and elements from the Crossy Road game. Boxes and paper and tape, oh my!
We've decided we need our own BMS Nerdfighters logo to show our pride. Below are submissions to the contest. Vote for which you like the best. Qualities of a good logo:
We started with one of the more serious (but hopeful) videos from John then watched Llamas with Hats 2 requested by Imani. It was a perfect introduction to today's activity: animation.
Nerds were shown GoAnimate and Scratch as options for creating short animations. It split nicely down the middle with half of the groups choosing GoAnimate and half choosing Scratch. GoAnimate allowed them to create easy dialogue with a template or create a character and flesh out a whole cartoon. Scratch uses coding to create animations, interactive art, and games. Most didn't have time to complete a project, but enjoyed the tools nonetheless.
Now that the nerds have had some practice, they made more stop motion films.
Hank Green was one of three well-known vloggers to interview President Obama this week. Did you know that Obama is not so secretly a nerd and even said DFTBA to John in last year's interview? After such a positive response to last week's showing of DEADLINE, stop motion animation with post-it notes, we tried making our own stop motion animation videos. First we watched some inspirational examples and a tutorial.
Then we practiced using the iMotion app on the school iPods and students' personal devices. Next week they will bring in their own characters (Lego, figurines, colored paperclips, etc) to develop more complex projects. Look at what they did in just a few minutes.
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