Campers Explore 3D Design & Printing

Summer camps kicked off this morning in the AT&T Classroom with Junior Adventures in Coding, Programming and Design.  Across the week, the children will explore a variety of digital tools for designing and programming animations, stories, games, and other digital media. This morning the campers were introduced to the design process for 3D printing using two applications - Makerbot Printshop and My Minifactory. Both platforms offer templates for creating and customizing creatures, figurines, medallions, and jewelry. Makerbot Printshop also offers a Shape Maker tool that children can use to create a 3D model from their own hand-made drawing by capturing a photo of the drawing and importing the image into the tool.  The children’s projects will be printed using a MakerBot Replicator Mini 3D printer and an XYZprinting da Vinci Jr. 1.0 Pro. 3D Printer.

Also this morning, the campers created animations using Scratch Jr, a free web-based tool developed for young children by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. The tool is designed to engage young children in using an introductory programming language to create animations, interactive stories and games. Children combine graphical programming blocks to animate characters to move, jump, dance, and sing. Children are also able to customize the characters in the paint editor, add their own voices and sounds, and insert photos of themselves. In addition to introductory programming and coding skills,  Scratch Jr. also supports the development of skills related to sequencing and numeracy while also fostering children's’ creativity and critical thinking.