The full blog and resources are here (the blog is currently locked and invite only for funders, sponsors, press, parents and participants only for the first eight weeks and will then go public. This was the reward you got for helping fund the club on Peoplefund.it.).

The hour long plan has notes and a slide show to accompany it and it takes you through the basics of a platform game, with items to collect, level progression and bad guys. It was great going through it twice as I found a few typos to neaten up, but most importantly it was perfect for the job. It was the right amount of time and depth of information for an introduction to Game Maker. The two girls now understood what was going on behind the scenes of games. It is important to note they only had five minutes max in the session to draw out the characters as this was not Game Design, but game programming. Despite this constraint they managed to make some lovely little characters.

The lesson plan is only an introduction it doesn’t feature sound, backgrounds or animation those things however should become fairly obvious after working your way through the lesson. Many thanks to YoYoGames for sponsoring Creative Computing Club with a copy of their excellent software and thanks to all those who helped fund it, it is going to be an amazing project.

The head of the school popped by to see how it was all going and asked one of the students who simply replied that it was “Awesome”, so I think they are enjoying working with AR.

As I mentioned I was a bit apprehensive about running the project, as I myself am new to the subject and I needed to know I could do it, before they put forward their ideas. I had also pre-made some ideas just in case the concept proved too much for them to take on board, but they really weren’t necessary. I can save those Ideas for another time. I am now really pleased and really excited about the project and can’t wait to see how they progress next week.

The first aim of the project is to teach creative computing; programming, basic electronics, animation, music, sound and much more in a safe, friendly and informal environment. We now have the money to afford enough; Arduinos, cables, components, cameras for animation, software, paper, pencils, a LEGO Mindstorms kit, memory sticks, safety goggles and more. This is all thanks to the people who donated here, all the people who tweeted, forwarded emails, mentioned it to a friend and Peoplefund.it for being so supportive of the project. I would also like to thank YoYoGames for their excellent Game Maker software, Rapid Electronics for it donation of electronic components and equipment, and O’Reilly Media for their amazing books and MAKE magazines, thank you so much. Additionally I would like to thank Theo Clarke the manager of Chantry Library for his enthusiasm and support of the project, Anna Shaw the manager of the Children’s Centre for allowing us use of the room and Suffolk STEMNET for spreading the word.

The initial course will run for 8 weeks, an introductory week, 6 weeks of different subjects and then an exhibition of the different projects the students have done. After this I will conduct a review and hopefully be able to tun the project indefinitely with a year long rolling course structure, featuring special sessions for both older and younger participants to get involved.

The second aim of the project is to produce high quality and free teaching resources for IT/ICT teachers to use, with supporting pictures, diagrams, blogs (by both the students and myself), audio recordings, videos and anecdotes taken directly from the sessions. These resources will be initially given to the sponsors of the project as a reward for their support and then be made public after the 8 week course has run. IT/ICT (or whatever you call it) is changing, I hope these resources will help some teachers, parents and individuals get involved in creative computing . I really enjoy teaching people how to make things, and the 12 to 16-year-old age range was vital to my development as an artist, I am truly grateful to be able to give something back to the local community which may in turn benefit others.

The Creative Computing Club isn’t just going to be a computing club, it is going to be an amazing computing club and this is all down to your support of the project. Thank you.

Matthew C. Applegate / Pixelh8

So Install Arduino as per their instructions. The first thing we did was go through an adaptation of the “Blink” tutorial and gradually altered it. It very simple turns on a LED and back off again. I have annotated it here and then altered it below, my annotations are in blue. and changes to the code are in red. The comments after the “//” symbols are just comments and are ignored by the computer. The same is true of comments that occur between “/*” and “*/” symbols. Here is the hardware set up done using Fritzing.

/*
Blink
Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.
This example code is in the public domain.
*/

//The set up area runs once at the beginning of the program.
void setup() {
// initialize the digital pin as an output.
// Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards:
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}

//The loop area loops again and again.
void loop() {
digitalWrite(13, HIGH);   // set the LED on //HIGH applies the current
delay(1000);              // wait for a second
digitalWrite(13, LOW);    // set the LED off //LOW removes the current
delay(1000);              // wait for a second
}

//End of program

This program does exactly the same thing but is just slightly easier to read. Get the student to type in the changes. Changing the “13″ to “Red” They are gonna want to move on from this example pretty quickly it is after all just a flashing light. The good thing about it is that it introduces the use of variables in a meaningful way what is pin 13 to them? but red links the code to the red LED.

/*
Blink V2.0
Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.
This example code is in the public domain.
*/

//We are creating a variable called red and giving it the value of 13.

//This helps the younger kids grasp every time we are referring to 13 we actually mean the red LED. 
int red =13;

//The set up area runs once at the beginning of the program.
void setup() {

// initialize the digital pin as an output.
// Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards:

pinMode(red, OUTPUT);
}

//The loop area loops again and again.
void loop() {
digitalWrite(red, HIGH);   // set the LED on //HIGH applies the current
delay(1000);              // wait for a second
digitalWrite(red, LOW);    // set the LED off //LOW removes the current
delay(1000);              // wait for a second
}

//End of program

Ok so all we have done is remove the “13″ from being used so much and replaced it with the word “red”, it helps it really does. Especially when we begin to add the “green” and “yellow” or whatever colour LEDS you have. We have in this example used pins 9 and 11 and not 12 and 11 to allow space between the components for inexperienced users, giving them a bit of space so they don’t cross or short circuit. You can use whatever digital pins you like just change the code to reflect that. Get them to type in the changes, get them to re-arrange the chunks of code that turn on and off the light so they flash in a different order. Experiment. The LEDs all share a common Ground or GND, taken from the breadboard back to the Arduino. The kids will soon start to have their own ideas about what they might want to do next and again you’ll move on from this example quickly.

//This program adds two other colours.

/*
Blink V3.0
Turns on several LEDs on, then off.
*/

//We are creating a variable called red and giving it the value of 13.

//This helps the younger kids grasp every time we are referring to 13 we actually mean the red LED and the same is now true for 11 and 9 for green and yellow.
int red =13;

int green = 11;

int yellow = 9;

//The set up area runs once at the beginning of the program.
void setup() {

// initialize the digital pin as an output.
// Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards:

pinMode(red, OUTPUT);

pinMode(green, OUTPUT);

pinMode(yellow, OUTPUT);
}

//The loop area loops again and again.
void loop() {

//This sequence will turn on the red, then turn it off, turn on the green, then off and then yellow, then off and back to the beginning again.
digitalWrite(red, HIGH); // set the LED on //HIGH applies the current
delay(1000); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(red, LOW); // set the LED off //LOW removes the current
delay(1000); // wait for a second

//These control the Green
digitalWrite(green, HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(green, LOW);
delay(1000);

//These control the Yellow
digitalWrite(yellow, HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(yellow, LOW);
delay(1000);

}

//End of program

In this alteration we set up the variable time and set it to 1000, we also subsequently change all of the “1000″‘s in the code to “time”. As it is it will be exactly the same as the last example, however you can then get them to change the value of time try 100ms, try 10ms, try 1ms. We found we actually couldn’t notice the flashing until around 3ms. We also took this opportunity to swap out one of the LEDs with a infrared LED to look at it through the iPhone, which lead to a discussion about being able to transmit message secretly, by flashing morse code on the infrared LED that people couldn’t see with the naked eye. Again, Experiment.

/*
Blink V4.0
Turns on several LEDs on, then off and allows the easy change of time.
*/

//We are creating a variable called red and giving it the value of 13.
//This helps the younger kids grasp every time we are referring to 13 we actually mean the red LED and the same is now true for 11 and 9 for green and yellow.
int red =13;
int green = 11;
int yellow = 9;

int time =1000;

//The set up area runs once at the beginning of the program.
void setup() {

// initialize the digital pin as an output.
// Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards:

pinMode(red, OUTPUT);
pinMode(green, OUTPUT);
pinMode(yellow, OUTPUT);
}

//The loop area loops again and again.
void loop() {

//This sequence will turn on the red, then turn it off, turn on the green, then off and then yellow, then off and back to the beginning again.
digitalWrite(red, HIGH); // set the LED on //HIGH applies the current
delay(time); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(red, LOW); // set the LED off //LOW removes the current
delay(time); // wait for a second

//These control the Green
digitalWrite(green, HIGH);
delay(time);
digitalWrite(green, LOW);
delay(time);

//These control the Yellow
digitalWrite(yellow, HIGH);
delay(time);
digitalWrite(yellow, LOW);
delay(time);

}

//End of program

I hope this helps, the key is to be willing and ready to change to keep their enthusiasm up.  Sure it is just flashing a LED, but it soon becomes their LED, their choice of time to flash, their order of flashing and once they take ownership over the learning they begin to think about what they can change. They very quickly start to think about applications for flashing lights, how they can incorporate this new knowledge in to solving an existing problem. I really like working in small groups, I know it is an ideal situation but working with one or two students at a time means in just around 90 minutes we can cover this area pretty thoroughly and answer a lot of questions they might have. Any questions just tweet me on twitter @pixelh8. I am also running a Creative Computer Club in Ipswich fro 12 to16-year-olds more info here.

I am featured in the book in Chapter 8 alongside Kenneth Young (Media Molecule/Little Big Planet) and when you get interviewed for something like this you never know just what the big picture is, again it is down to Pam’s skill of drawing together the various strands of peoples lives to create that complete image. I am am truly grateful to have been a small part in such a wonderful text which I am sure several of you will appreciate. You can get a hold of the book at the Oxford University Press website here and whether your a musician, researcher, educator, or just interested in music and its many areas this is definitely a very good book for you to read.

Here is some more information on the book.

‘Musical Creativites in Practice’ offers a powerful corrective to myths and outmoded conceptions. It argues the need for conceptual expansion of musical creativities in line with real world practices. It explores how different types of musical creativities are regonized and communicated in the practices of professional musicians including composers, improvisers, singer songwriters, original bands, DJs, live coders and interactive sound designers working in the video games industry. Drawing on Bourdieu’s thinking tools, this book provides the foundation for a sociological analysis of musical creativities which is designed to transform the ways that music in education is thought about in the future.”

It was good session and although they are a little sad that they won’t see me again for two weeks they are happy that when I return they will be able to play on their web apps / games, and hopefully you will to. So I have two weeks to make three simple web apps using all of their assets, design guides and flow charts.