aplan4life

My kids expressed an interest in computer programming. They love
Jimmy Neutron, Robots, and many of the cool computer animated
shows. Is anyone aware of a fun program that could help in this
area, preferbly kid friendly?

Also, I found that connecting the dd is easy as she is pleased to do
darn near everything. With Zak though, it is harder. Do any of you
have any stories to share of how you brought more happiness to your
unschooling sons? I've decided to take some building workshops or
something because he wants to build with wood, but he doesn't want
to take "classes". That's cool though b/c I am totally excited
about this opportunity to learn. He is totally excited to do
projects with me! YAY :-) We are going to build a crumb catcher
within the next couple of days, hopefully, I'll have fingers left in
order to be able to type!

Perhaps with this interest in computer programming and/or building,
he'll find his niche'. Also, he loves video games, he is wonderful
at figuring them out. Are there any sites to help encourage
actually making video games?

Thank you all,
Sandy W~

Joyce Fetteroll

On Oct 11, 2005, at 5:55 PM, aplan4life wrote:

> My kids expressed an interest in computer programming. They love
> Jimmy Neutron, Robots

Actually what you're looking for is computer animation.

Probably the easiest way to start is with animated GIFs. They aren't
Jimmy Neutron ;-) but they can be relatively complex. Or really
really simple, just swapping two images repeatedly that gives the
illusion of movement.

There's an overview here and some links to software:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/findsoftware/a/gifanimation.htm

And a list here:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gifanimationsoftware/

If you have a Mac there's VSE Animation Maker for $10

http://vse-online.com/animation-maker/index.html

I know there's at least one free one for PCs. One of the more popular
ones is GIF Construction Set:

http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html

I don't know how easy the program is for kids to understand but you
can download a demo there.

Kids Domain has some good downloads for both Macs and PCs in a
variety of areas. Some are free. Some are demos.

http://www.kidsdomain.com/down/index.html

I don't see an animation program there but I'm sure there must be one.

(A friend of my daughter's is going to a technical school and they
use Microsoft GIF Animator. It's free. You'll need a separate art
program to draw the pictures in though.)

If he really gets into it and pushes the GIFs as far as they can go
you might want to look into Toon Boom Studio Express:

http://www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudioExpress/

There are also some kids programs that let you animate other people's
cartoon characters (there's one for the Simpsons) but I don't think
you can add your own.

> Also, he loves video games, he is wonderful
> at figuring them out. Are there any sites to help encourage
> actually making video games?

Here's something I posted a while ago. Sorry for the goofy formating.
I copied it from Unschooling.info message boards.

> [url="http://www.stagecast.com/"]Stagecast Creator[/url] is a good
> place to start. He can start making games immediately by just
> moving objects around the screen and the program writes the code
> for him. But the code is editable so he can start tinkering with it
> at any time. They have some really great tutorials that will get
> him started quickly. There's a demo version that limits you to just
> a few objects. And, no, he won't need to know math to program [;)]
> But he'll pick it up as he goes along! [:D]
>
> And something I just found out is that you can write games in
> Flash. The great thing about Flash is that he can put his games up
> on the internet and let his friends play [:)] (Flash also does
> animation among other things.) Macromedia offers a [i]generous[/i]
> discount for educators (including homeschoolers). (It's $99 at the
> [url="http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?store=OLS-
> EDU"]Education Store[/url]) (It says homeschoolers qualify at their
> discretion. If they turn you down I found this list of academic
> discounters at Adobe that sell their software (among other things):
> [url="https://www.academic-collegiate.com/products.htm"]Academic &
> Collegiate Software[/url]
>
> BTW, if he thinks he might be interested in doing webpages, you
> might give serious consideration to the suite of programs (Studio
> MX 2004 for $100 more) that includes Dreamweaver (for creating
> webpages), Flash and 2 art programs. (We've both used Fireworks a
> lot for drawing.) (Without the educator's discount it's like $600 [:
> 0]) Most of the big internet service providers (AOL, Earthlink and
> such) have walkthroughs to put up simple webpages so Dreamweaver
> isn't necessary but it is nice if he has the urge for less generic
> [:)]
>
> There are [i]loads[/i] of tutorials about Flash on the internet. A
> good beginning might be the Quicktime videos at [url="http://
> www.cartoonsmart.com/"]Cartoon Smart[/url]. Scroll down to the
> bottom and there's one for Video Games. The freebies we
> downloaded ... well he didn't edit out his "Oops, didn't mean to do
> that"s [;)] but they were very easy to use. You just run Flash and
> Quicktime at the same time and follow along with what he does. You
> can pause and back up just like with a video.
>
> I've also heard good things about [url="http://www.ambrosiasw.com/
> games/coldstone/"]Coldstone Game Engine[/url] for developing RPGs.
> There's a demo version at the website to download. I don't have any
> personal experience with it though. If you type Coldstone and
> review into Google, that should turn some information up.
>
> (For non-Macophiles, as far as I know the above are all available
> for Windoze too. There's also Dark Basic that I've heard really
> good things about and for which there's a ton of support and
> tutorials. And my daughter took a 2 week full day course at
> [url="http://video-game.internaldrive.com/"]ID Tech Camps[/url]
> where they used [url="http://www.clickteam.com/English/
> multimedia_fusion.htm"]Multimedia Fusion[/url] which she really
> liked. (The camp used the standard version at the time. There are
> free trials at the website.) She also liked the camp but they were
> a bit pricey.)

Joyce
Answers to common unschooling questions: http://home.earthlink.net/
~fetteroll/rejoycing/
Weekly writing prompts: [email protected]




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aplan4life

Joyce,

Thank you so much for that wealth of information! It is greatly
appreciated. Learning these things with Zak, if he really wants to
learn them is going to be so much fun.

~Sandy Winn