Younger+Group


 * Day 1**: Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is one of the best programs being used professionally today. It's ease of use and multitude of tools allow it to design new objects, work in 3d, and even have a lot of fun. We will be creating cartoon characters with the pathfinder tools, making silhouettes with the pen tool, and making faces using just the type tool.

Activity 1: Basic Shapes
Using Adobe Illustrator we are going to play with some basic shapes. Like this example:



First open Adobe Illustrator, if it isn't on the home dock then go to search and enter Illustrator, it should come up right away.

Next select create new print document. We don't want this document to be to big so let's lower the settings so that the document is about 4 inches by 4 inches or 288 points by 288 points depending on which unit of measurement your working with. For this project either one is fine as they are exactly the same. (i.e. 4 inches = 288 points)

Now your in Adobe Illustrator, WELCOME!

On the left hand side of the screen you'll see the tools bar. We are only working with one or two of them right now and that will be the shape tool and the select tool.

The Select tool is the one at the very top left corner. It allows you to select objects and move them around. The other one, the shape tool, lets you draw shapes such as Squares, Circles, Triangles, Stars and so on. Let's begin by clicking on the Shape tool, click and hold down your mouse over the shape tool to select which shape you want. Next go over to the big white page and click and drag your new shape onto the page.

Congratulations you made your first shape! But it doesn't have any color. Why dont we select it with the selection tool. Click on the selection tool and then click on your shape. It should get all these weird dots and lines over it, don't worry they don't stay there. At the top of the screen you should see some boxes like these.



These control the color of the object. The first box which is white by default controls the inside color or "fill" as it is known. The second box controls the border color or "stroke". Play with these until you get the colors you want.

Now that you have your shape in the right color you want and know how to do it. Go ahead and make some more shapes. They can be any colors or shapes but let's try to fill the page.

= Activity 2: Type Faces =

The next activity is going to be really fun. We are going to draw with letters.

Lets start out by creating a new print document. If Illustrator doesn't give you a prompt to create a new document you can go to FILE at the top and select new...

Now look at your tools pannel, you should see a T. This is the type tool. At the top you will see a couple of options with this tool selected. These control the font or look of the letters and the size of the letters. Go ahead and play around with all the options to make a face out of letters.

Here are a couple of suggestions: U and O are great letters for faces.

J, lower case n and u can be great noses.

You can repeat curved letters or spiky letters for hair.

Activity 3: Mouse

Now we are going to play with a different set of tools all together, called the pathfinder tools.



Create a new document using the same settings as before (4 inchs by 4 inches). At the top you will see an option called Window. Click on Pathfinder. This will open a new box with different images. These are known as the pathfinder tools.
 * MAKE 2 MORE EXAMPLES**

Let's start out by drawing a circle, go back to the shape tool and create a black circle. Next lets make a white circle and over lap them.

For this project we only really need two of the tools in Pathfinder. The first one is the Unite tool, this takes the two objects and combines them together, the second one is the subtract tool. It will take away what ever is on top from the back. With the two circles on top of each other, select them both with the select tool and then hit the second button or the subtract tool. This will make a new shape! We can use these tools, the select tool, and the basic shape tool to create anything we want so let's make ears, a nose, a mouth, and eyes and make a mouse.

Advanced: Adding in more tools to create bigger effects


 * Day 2**: Video production. Videos are everywhere, and working with them is another world altogether. We will be going over how to shoot videos with a camera, how to edit videos, and then adding effects and filters to our videos.

Activity 1: Shooting and Importing Video

In this project we are going to shoot a video! We will figure out what we want to do and then shoot a quick video. We will show you how to use the camera and what it takes to take it from the camera to the computer using iMovie.

Activity 2: Editing

Now we are going to cut and edit the movie. Open iMovie, and make sure that the video is imported to the computer. Now lets drag and drop the movie into the project table. From here we can add title screens, credits, and a lot of other things. The most important thing to do here is edit our movie down to just what we want to be in the end product. When we are all done we export our movie to the desktop for the final stage of this project.

Activity 3: Effects (maybe too advanced)

Our video is almost done, but not quite yet. We are going to open a program called Adobe Photoshop. When you first open photoshop go to the right hand side and click on Essentials, this will change the workspace we work in. We want to select video near the bottom of the list.

Now we want to go to file and open the movie we made before. It should show up on the time line now. Now we want to enable smart filters to our video. We do this by going to Filter at the top and select convert for smart filters. We can now add Adobe Photoshop filters to our videos! Go ahead and try out a filter.

Now we are going to make a new layer. We do this by going to the top and selecting layer, then click on new... and then layer. Next let's get our type tool. Just like in Illustrator the type tool is represented by the T in the tools panel. Now on the new layer we can type our names and make them appear for a short amount of time. We will export and be done with our movies!

Advanced: Different Video

It's becoming more and more important to understand how websites are built. On this day we will be taking a look at our favorite websites and see how they are made. After that we will start creating our own websites and finish them off by putting in our favorite images and movies.
 * Day 3**: Html programming. (Changed to Flash Animation)

-Brainpop

-Frame by Frame

-Shape Tween for advanced users


 * Day4**: Robotics and Computers. We will learn how computers work, what the names of computer parts are, what they do, and how to build our own computers. The capstone to this will be making our own robots using Lego Mindstorms, snap circuits, and the Makey Makey.

Activity 1: How circuits work (Snap Circuits) -We will do 2 to 3 different projects to gain a basic understanding on how a circuit works

Activity 2: Makey Makey Organic Computer -I'll bring bannas and we will make a working key board from the bannas. -If there is time I'll demonstrate how you can make a human keyboard using tape and the Makey Makey.

Activity 3: How to Build your own Computer -What are the parts of the computer? -Where do they go? -Computer Jeopardy if there is time

Advanced: Lego Mindstorms


 * Day 5**: Digital Worlds and Online E tiquette. It's very important to understand how technology is changing our lives and how it effects us. On this day we will be going over how digital worlds work, why they appeal to people, and how to behave in these seemingly community run environments.

Activity 1: Finish Up Work and Put it on flash drives

Activity 2: Proper Internet Usage

Activity 3: Minecraft