Coding for Artists – Video Studio

The setup of the studio space for doing the video instruction has taken much more time than expected. The green screen setup that I was planning on didn’t work in my home office and I didn’t have a quiet enough space at school (work) so I ended up in our basement!

The green sheet I purchased only really worked well once it was put on a frame which I made out of 2 X 4’s and was lit properly. I thought this would be easier but since I ended up setting up in the basement the lighting wasn’t what I expected.

Finding the right cameras with the required features also ended up being a challenge. Although I was planning to use a high end SLR camera to capture the footage, the pass through video didn’t remove the focus box for face detection. There was a trick to make this work, which was to mount the camera upside down, but in the end a new higher level webcam worked out well enough to capture my project.

In the end it might turn out to be the best location and can remained setup for future videos.

Coding for Artists – Outlines and Introductions

With a number of outlines in hand, on the computer, I am ready to start laying out a more detailed framework for the course. The grading rubrics for each of the projects have been roughed out and will need to be reviewed again as the final project descriptions are created.

Working to align all the standards from both CollegeBoard Art AP and the Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA) has been a challenge but I believe the final weekly projects should meet they easily. It is still a little difficult to tell without real students to work with in this project.

Up next I need to figure out the “introductions” section of the course to greet and welcome students to the tools they will be using.

Coding for Artists

This is the start of a series of blog posts for my capstone project by the same name for Empire State College’s masters degree in Learning and Emerging Technologies.

The “Coding for Artists” project has been inspired by my fellow teachers in the Unified Arts department at East Hampton High School and by the work of Dan Shiffman of the ITP at NYU.

This project is meant to be offered as a teaching resource for teachers looking for a 3 week module to enrich their curriculum. A half year (one semester) length elective course will be developed at East Hampton HS later this school year.