What the Vidcode staff is up to: ITP Camp

Sometimes we'll be writing updates about what the people behind Vidcode are doing outside of work!

During June Leandra, the Vidcode designer, spent the month learning, tinkering and building at ITP Camp. Read about her experience, and what she's bringing back to Vidcode from what she learned.

 

ITP Camp was an absolutely incredible experience. I attended workshops on creating audio visualizations with P5, user testing, creating bowls out of mycelia and making hanging plants, and ran sessions on using sketch and animating svgs with css!

Taken at the end of the 'Using Sketch' workshop, when everyone illustrated blue unicorn logos! I was frowning to match the unicorn.

Taken at the end of the 'Using Sketch' workshop, when everyone illustrated blue unicorn logos! I was frowning to match the unicorn.

Camp was a playground, with so many toys that I didn't even get to half of them. I spent a lot of my time playing with the laser cutter, I was absolutely blown away seeing things I made in Photoshop and Illustrator enter the physical world.

laser cut jewelry
laser cut illustration

 

What I was able to bring back to my work at Vidcode from the experience, was an understanding of the world of creative coding and the communities around creative coding that exist. Processing has been around since 2001! I had been working with Vidcode with the goal of getting people excited about learning to code through creative projects, but I definitely didn't understand the amazing ecosystem that that work is a part of. 

One of many Processing sketches I made while at camp

One of many Processing sketches I made while at camp

I'm already working on creating new Vidcode lessons around the creative coding technologies I was exposed to during my month of camp, be on the lookout for new lessons in the fall!

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We Spent a Week With Hoboken Vidcoders!

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Vidcode spent the week of June 15-18 at Stevens Coop School. Sixteen students spent four days learning the fundamentals of coding with JavaScript, and making some amazing videos!

Elise, our amazing instructor, spent the first day going over the elements of JavaScript, as students used them hands-on in the Vidcode editor.

They used objects, properties and numbers to add effects to their videos, and strings to change the color of the videos they'd shot.

They learned about and created variables to hold their number and string values!

 They worked with some very original variable names.

 

They worked with some very original variable names.

The next day, the class moved onto learning about how to create and manipulate arrays.

They used this knowledge to put photos they took into arrays, and iterated through them to create stop motions videos. 

Once they learned how to create simple stop motion videos, they went out with clay and paper to create more elaborate videos, including this one below titled 'The Big Blob Attack'. Check out the code that was used to put it together!

Stop motion with JavaScript arrays

Later in the week, students moved on to some more advanced lessons, and used functions and variables to make their videos change over time. Sam used these coding skills to make a video of a plane look like an old movie!

HTML5 canvas effects
video effects with code at summer camp

The last day was spent on everyone's final projects, and getting ready for final presentations! Students spent the day making new stop motions, music videos, and other creative projects, and then adding their final effects in Vidcode using everything they had learned about JavaScript that week.

Final presentations were great! Students showed off their final videos, and talked about the coding concepts that they had used in their final edits.

learn to code summer camp for middle school students

You can see all the videos the students made this week in our gallery!

Interested in having your own Vidcode workshop in your summer camp or school? Find out more about our group programs!

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Maker Faire Vidcode Station (and a Blue Ribbon!)

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Maker Faire Bay Area blue ribbon booth

We spent the weekend of May 15 to 17 in San Mateo at the Bay Area Maker Faire! We set up a stop motion station and a Vidcode coding station, and we're so excited about all the vidcodes that people of all ages came up and made! They're all on display in our Maker Gallery.

Maker faire video with code

Like this vidcode, by our awesome volunteer Cynthia!

Maker faire dragon video

Or this adorable dragon by Morgan!

stop motion video with code

And (our absolute favorite!) this Vidcode heart by Lilaine

Blue ribbon Maker Faire Bay Area

We are also SUPER excited to announce that we received a blue ribbon! We had so much fun meeting everyone at the Maker Faire, and can't wait for the next one.

 

Girls learning to code

Mapping the sneakernet

"Mapping the sneakernet" is an article by AN XIAO MINA for The New Inquiry

There are 4.3 billion people who are said to be unconnected to the internet.  What type of communities are popping up sharing connections with family members and communities at large?  'Shared access', sharing devices and telecom accounts, is common in places like rural Lazon in the Philippines where one community member will have a facebook account and the community shares it for updates/ discussions.

Read more here

BETAGirls

BETAGirls came to our office this week!  We had a blast coding with them and building stop motion animation projects on Vidcode.  We were blown away by the amount of talent, intelligence, and ambition that was in that room thanks to the girls!  

They are gearing up for the technovation challenge where they will be building a business plan and an app.  

They are already so ahead of the game!  Can't wait to see what they bring to the world.

 


Growth Mindset

As we start off the new year it's fun to think about how malleable our brains are and the great potential for learning that we all share.  

Code is something anyone can learn, play, and create with.  It's important for kids to know code is not just for certain types of students - it's for all types of students.  We are big fans of Carol Dweck's research here at Vidcode.  Go growth mindset!

Mindshift:  Students benefit from learning that intelligence is not fixed


Monday Dev meetings

Another reason to code!  You get to work with your girlfriends and make cool projects!!  During our Monday developer meetings we go over new additions to the website by looking over our code "home" base (the area where we store all of our collective code that makes up the Vidcode website). It's a team process and super collaborative.

On the left you can see our Github, this is where we store all of our code.  We'll teach you more about that later!

On the left you can see our Github, this is where we store all of our code.  We'll teach you more about that later!

Be the first!

Murial Siebert was the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.  Read her inspiring story here:  NYTimes

Both code and finance are powerful forces in our world.  We need more female voices in both!  Also, there are many programmers who work at trading desks for investments firms, like one of our co-founders Melissa!!  She wrote algorithms at a hedge fund trading desk before she started Vidcode.