It was a Pinteresting year

The past 18 weeks have been very busy.  As you may know, if you have read previous posts, I have been busy teaching video game and web design to middle school children.  I will share more of my experience and thoughts about teaching this subject in another post.
What I would like to address in this final post of the year is my obsession with Pinerest.com. This obsession began just before I started teaching.  And to be honest, if I was not teaching I think I would be trying everything I've pinned on pinterest.  However, since time is limited, I have only been able to try out a few of the wonderful things that I've pinned.
Here are the things that I've tried (some pictures  are yet to come.  some I did not take pictures of, sadly)
1 My first pinterest project was a knitting cake for my sister's birthday!
Here's Mine and my mom's cake

Here is the pinterest inspiration:

2. Wire Organizer using tp rolls BRILLIANT!
Here's mine

Here's the pinterest inspiration

3. Balloon Garland


here's the inspiration

5.So I had to try and make this centerpiece. I figured why not!? I have branches all I needed was some silver metallic spray paint and a bag of mylar shreddings. So here it is! This was not easy to photography. It looked much nicer in person, trust me.



here's the inspiration

Ok so mine needs a little work...
5.Chocolate covered marshmallow pops.  I cover some with graham cracker crumbs, some with coconut shavings, and some with colored sprinkles.  Picture is not so good because I wrapped them in clear wrapping before taking the picture.  But they tasted good!


Here's the inspiration

6.Taping shipping boxes together(recycled ones) to use for classroom papers. I love this one. I have to take a picture of mine when I get back to school. I covered mine with neon green duct tape. This is a great one!
here's the inspiration


7. I did a pumpkin centerpiece for Thanksgiving. It turned out really nice but I can't find the picture. I may have deleted it off my camera before saving:)
Here's the inspiration

This was very easy to do and looked great. Would have been very expensive if I bought it at the florist.
8. Mini Grilled cheese and tomato soup. My chef husband made these as a light snack on Thanksgiving day before Dinner. He used a long thin french beard. It was perfect for little sandwiches for dunking in the soup. No pictures but
Here's the inspiration

9. Crayon Painting




 Here's the inspiration

10. I made this broccoli salad
Here's the inspiration

11. I made these cute acorns on Thanksgiving. Don't think I'll do them again. It was a lot of work and not really worth it. Fun to do it once but that's it. And the individual ingredients added up to a big expense.
Here's the inspiration

12/ One final project is this corkboard on the inside of the kitchen cabinets. I haven't done it yet but I have the cork just have to get some temporary adhesive.
Here's the inspiration


Thank you pinterest for all of the wornderful inspiration and all of the talent and generous contributors!
I can't wait to try more creative ideas in 2012!

Too tired to blog

I love blogging.  I miss blogging on Chalk it up!  Actually, I've been blogging a lot but just not here.  I have two new blogs.  One is for my Game Design classes and the other is for my web design class.  I blog there Monday thur Friday.  Sadly, it leaves me no energy to blog here at my comfy, homey, familiar blog Chalk it up!

Life has changed so much.  There's so much I want to share here but that would require thinking and it's Saturday, so I don't want to think. 

Although, I still find myself scouring the internet for searching for ways to teach game design to middles schoolers.


I normally would not publish a post without at least one picture.  Maybe I'll look for something to illustrate this post.  Be right back!

Here we go:




So sweet!


These beautiful photos were sent to me by one of my wonderful customers! She is a very talented professional photographer who purchased unframed chalkboards from Chalk it up! and sent me these picture to show how she is using the chalkboards!
Thank you for giving me permission to share these photo on my blog!
Thank you for the fantastic photo!

There I did it!  I posted to my favorite blog!:) I feel much better now!:)

Have a great Saturday!

Life as a Game Design Teacher

 

Well, I'm entering my sixth week of life as a middle school game design teacher.  On the down side my poor Chalk it up! blog has suffered.  No  time to blog.  I have been doing one post on the weekend to try stay current.  However, one post a week really does effect my traffic.:(
I hope you'll stop by on the weekend to say hi!

So life as a Game Design  Teacher...
It's fun, it's tiring, it's sometimes difficult, well not difficult but challenging. Especially since I have never taught it before and I started this job one day before school started.
Although I have taken several courses in Digital Media I had no idea what I was entering when I started delving into the world of game design.  I thought how hard can it be?  I know how to use Maya, Illustrator, Photoshop, Final cut pro, flash... Heck I even know a little bit of coding(basic html and css throw in a dash of php) How hard can it be?

Well., as I started researching I began to realize the complexity of game design.  I would search and search for way to teach game design to middle school kids.  And let me tell you, these kids enter the class and say, "So when are we going to make our own games?"

HAHA...

Well, let's start with the design process.  Kids think....borrrrring.  I want to make a game!!!

I search and search and find Gamestar Mechanic.  Ok here's a site totally geared (no pun intended) toward middle school kids.  It saved my life for the first five weeks.  No downloading, we register as a class(the biggest headache here is kids forgeting their passwords and user names-yes I tell them to write it down-but you know kids)

So Gamestar starts by having the kids play the games to learn the system, and elements.  Next the move up to fixing games.  Finally they make their own games sort of.  No programing no creating sprite simply drag and drop.  This site is great for an introduction to the process of design and testing games and giving feedback.  Beyond that you really don't learn much about making games.  The kids love it because it's easy and it's mostly playing games with minimal effort in creating games(which in a way is deceptive because they think this is easy)  There are a few students who get it and are not satisfied with the limitation of creating games.  Thank god for those kids. They give me hope!

So the concepts learned in the first five weeks are Design Process, What makes a game balanced and the elements of design in a game.  All important first steps.

This week we delve a little deeper.  We will be starting Scratch.  This program begins to touch alll of the areas of game design.  I still need to poke around and figure out the best way to get the most out of this software.  I'll be doing that this weekend. I will try to quickly come up with a sequential curriculum to make sense of it all.  Wish me luck!

Also, each weekend I create a new visual to display in the classroom.
Week one I painted a large Angry bird poster because someone took my stuffed angry bird.

I posted an announcement on my poster that it went missing 7th period.  The poster worked and my angry bird was returned the next day. (the power of the paint brush)
The next week I added visuals for my one web design class ( I didn't mention I'm teaching web design too. A whole different topic for another post).  I Made big HTML and CSS signs. I also printed the codes that they were learn one per page and displayed them on the cabinets.
 


The next week I made a big poster showing What makes a balanced game?

The kids made cartoons the first week of school on index cards and I called them preliminary sketches for avatars(to be created in paint.net) and posted them on the  bulletin boards.
Last week I printed out the words Pre production, production and post production (vertically) and laminated them and attached them to the narrow polls.  I also made gears out of foam core and attached them to the tops of the polls with words explaining the three different aspects of design.  I have to take pictures of that.
Oh I forget, I made a long banner that says Creativity is key in technology.

The kids did pre production sketches yesterday.  I will be switching out the bulletin boards with the best examples from each class. I will still display the avatars on the wall next to the boards.
My goal is to have a fun visually exciting and informative classroom.

So as you can see, I've been busy.  And did I mention the fun busy work created for us do nothing teachers.  Lots of useless paper work.  I won't get into that now.

The chalkboard business is going well too.  Lots of sales!  If you need a chalkboard don't forgot to visit our etsy shop.  With hubby between jobs he's making lots of chalkboards and shipping them out fast!!

Always Remember 9/11

Never forget!


It is ten years later.
Ten years ago on this day I was in my nineth month of pregnancy with my son. I was so scared for his and my older son's futures. What was happening to America?

Ten years later...9/11 has left a scar on our beautiful country and changed it in many ways. However, the American spirit is one that is powerful and bright. Freedom is in our blood.

The evil people who have tried to shake it out of us have not succeeded. They thought they could but they will never understand the power of Freedom, Liberty and the American way of life!

We are strong people! Freedom and Goodness will always prevail.

I will observe a moment of silence with my family today in remembrance of the innocent lives lost, the brave Americans who fought and continue to fight for the greatest cause of all FREEDOM!

I will recall that day and teach my children about what happened and who was to blame. (they are now old enough to learn all that happened on that day)

We must never forget! And be vigilant about protecting our freedom.

God Bless America!

Leisurely Labor Day Weekend!

It's been a busy few weeks.

Yesterday when I got home from school I thought, "Wow, a three day weekend! I want to go out and celebrate... after I lay down for a few minutes." 8 hours later, I woke up, looked at the clock, which said 3:00 and realized I never even changed out of my clothes. So much for the fun night on the town.

So, today after we mulled around for most of the day, we decided to get in the car and head for the beach.


It was a glorious late afternoon at the beach. An all American Labor Day weekend! Red, white and blue!





Hope you are enjoying your weekend too!

Computer Class Activity

I've been away from my blog for so long! I have made it through my first two weeks of teaching Gaming and Web Design to nearly 200 middle school students. I think I'll return on Monday and shoot for another week!

I came up with a great activity for them to do on Monday.
We have covered a lot of information so far. I created a website for the class using what else?...blogspot... I literally put the site together in an hour. I use it everyday to post the lessons and bell work. I also have pages for chapters and other information. The list of resource links is a great feature too.
Anyway, their activity for Monday is to go to Wordle.net and create a word cloud using the terms we have covered. They will open the website and wordle.net in windows side by side and copy and paste words from our class website. The main concepts will be copied and pasted several times more than the sub topics. They will then have fun creating their word cloud white background with black and gray words only. I will select a few word clouds to print out. Can't print them all/ too much ink.
I will use these lovely word clouds to decorate the walls of my classroom!:)
Here are some screen prints to show you my process.

Chalkboards for the Classroom

Classrooms sure have changed!  It used to be that every classroom had a chalkboard. Could you imagine back when you were a kids, if you had somebody say to you, there will be no chalkboards in the classrooms by the time your kids go to school.  You would have thought they were crazy!  Chalkboards and classrooms go together like peanut butter and jelly!

Here is my new classroom and guess what...NO Chalkboards!  Only computers and whiteboards.  We'll have to change that!:)



I see a perfect surface to put chalkboards!
Stay tuned...

This may take a while. I'm pretty busy these days. Teaching middle school kids game design and web design is fun but a lot of working too!