Yesterday was a fairly relaxing day; we played frisbee, took a trip to Hobby Lobby, and collected supplies for camp core concept activities. Today we were not so lucky to have so many fun things to work on. We spent most of our time on our computers today working on Alice and camp surveys.
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| This is what spending hours on the computer does to us! |
We did get to meet with all of our AMAZING camp assistants this afternoon, though! It was fun and exciting to meet with Kelsey, Beth, Suzy, and Sandy and to hear how much they are looking forward to the start of camp next week. These girls have so much enthusiasm and are really looking forward to helping with camp curriculum and camp activities. We also decided to have two staff teams for Minute to Win It (MTWI) this year. Not only will staff be competing against campers, but against each other as well! MTWI is going to be INTENSE!
By the way, our progress in Alice and camp surveys today was exceptional (just to give ourselves a little 'pat on the back'). Here's what we did:
In Alice:
Janie and I are almost finished with our example game, what we like to refer to as our version of the classic game Frogger. In our game a chicken is trying to cross the road instead of a frog ... It's possible that we may find the answer to the age-old question, "Why did the chicken cross the road?!" We were able to complete all of the collision detection for the cars and implement a second level into our game. When the chicken successfully crosses the road five times, level 2 begins. The difference between level 1 and level 2 is that in level 2 the speed of the cars increases, making it more difficult to cross the road successfully. We decided we would like our chicken to be able to cross a nice, clean, beautiful highway, so we added some flowers, trees, bushes, and road signs to our world. The finishing touches will be put into the game tomorrow!
Nicole started working on lesson plans for the last two days of Alice instruction. She is building a game in Alice to demonstrate the concepts she will be teaching, including (but not limited to): functions, conditionals, collision detection, events, lives, timers, and score. The game that Nicole is building is a type of tennis game. A penguin (controlled by the user) will try to hit a ball against a wall, and when the ball hits the wall it will bounce back; the penguin will then attempt to hit the ball again ... and again ... and again!
Camp Research Surveys:
Alyssa worked on cleaning up, organizing, and refining the surveys that we will use during camp for research. Students will take surveys at the beginning and end of camp and at the beginning and end of various portions of camp (LilyPad & App Inventor). This is a HUGE and very important aspect of camp for YWiC because we analyze the results of all of our surveys for research posters and projects, and use the feedback from surveys to make camp better year after year! However, going through surveys is a tedious and time-consuming job - which explains why Alyssa looks so stressed!
We all can't wait until camp starts (Just 4 more days!). Until then, this is Judge Jen, signing off!
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