I was asked to present at Savannah's Telfair Museum's Family Day. My son and I came up with this presentation showing off some of the software we use to enable our own creativity and fun. (The movie we made can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/8785935)

1. Enabling Creativity
Software that encourages creation and exploration

2. Introductions

3. Hi, I’m Kevin

4. Kevin’s Pertinent Info
• Age: 34
• Time as a geek: 24 years
• Professional nerd: 15 years
• Job: Chief Architect for http://uplaya.com

5. Hi, I’m Max

6. Max’s Pertinent Info
• Age: 10
• Time as a geek: 7 years
• Job: 4th grader

7. The future is full of
technology...

8. There is no escape.

9. Every job will have
some aspect of
computer science
in it.

10. Why not get started
early, and have some
fun along the way?

11. Why Geek Out?
• You learn problem solving skills quickly
• You find that all problems are made up of
increasingly smaller and simpler problems
• Once you have success once, it’s easy to
build on... until you’re unstoppable.

12. Curiosity
• These days, it’s not a question of what’s
possible, it’s a question of what tool will get
you there fastest and easiest?
• For every question you or your kid has,
there’s an answer out there on the web.
• And if not, it’s easy to find a tool that will
help you answer it.

13. Creativity
• When every question is answerable and
every problem is solvable, the fun is in
finding the most creative solution
• If you can think it up, you can build it,
almost always for free - using open source
tools and a little experimentation and hard
work.

14. What do kids love to
do?

15. Kids love to tell stories,

16. invent games,

17. build worlds,

18. explore their worlds,

19. and create imaginary
characters.

20. Tools for the job...
• Pencil (or crayons, markers, pens, brushes,
sticks) and paper
• Clay or Play-doh
• Your computer... which is what we’re going
to talk about. Because I’m a nerd.

21. Scratch

22. Programming Made
Easy
• Teaches basic programming constructs
using drag and drop widgets and fun
animations.
• Allows kids to start really simple and
eventually build complex games and
animations.
• Max calls it “kiddie Flash”

23. Some Things Max Has
Made...
• Cursor’s Adventure: a short point and
click adventure game
• Bouncey Dot animation
• Lots of other little toys (like a cat that
turned 45 degrees every time it ran into a
wall)

24. Demo Time!

25. Let’s Animate the Cat!

26. http://scratch.mit.edu

27. Any questions about
Scratch?

28. iStopMotion

29. Wallace and Gromit...
And You
• Make your own stop-motion animation
• All you need is a Mac and a web cam
• Easy to use, and you can export things to
iMovie easily.

30. Make It Easy On
Yourself
• There’s no shame in looping the same
frames over and over again.
• Don’t try for perfect - remember, it’s
supposed to be fun!
• Goofy faces are fun to animate too!

32. The Coriolis Effect
• It took about an hour for every ten
seconds of film. That included Max writing
and recording the voiceover.
• We looped a lot. The earth rotating and the
coriolis loops were 1.5 seconds repeated
for a couple minutes and then cut.
• We used my “fancy” camera, so it’s higher
quality than you’d get with a webcam.

33. Other Tools Used
• iMovie to edit all the clips together
• Garageband to record and export the
voiceover
• iDVD to burn it for class.

34. The Downside
• iStopMotion isn’t free or open source.
• You need a Mac.
• There are Windows alternatives, but I can’t
recommend any because I don’t do
Windows.
• There are some for Linux too, but I haven’t
used them.

35. Any Questions about
iStopMotion?

36. http://boinx.com/
istopmotion/

37. Inform

38. Interactivate Your
Fiction
• Build your own Zork-like text adventures.
• Plain text programming language
• Very good documentation built-in to the
application
• Works on pretty much every operating
system.

39. Demo Time!

40. Informative Caveats
• There’s a bit of a learning curve. Max got
kind of frustrated when he first started
playing with it.
• I had to remind him to read the manual
several times before he actually sat down
and did it.

41. Why is Inform so
Great, Max?
• There are tons of downloadable extensions
• Plain-text coding!
• Introduces a new generation to text
adventures!
• That’s all he can think of...

42. Any questions about
Inform?

43. http://inform7.com/

44. Ficly

45. Max says it’s awesome.

46. What is it, Max?

47. It’s a gigantic ever-
growing book of short
stories, written by
constructive awesome
people.

48. Ficly, according to me...

49. Creatively Constrained
Writing
• You have 1,024 characters to tell a story.
• Anyone can write a prequel or sequel to
any other story.
• It’s great for young writers who are mature
enough to handle constructive criticism.
• Not made for kids, but they’re welcome if
they can play nice (adults have to play nice
too).

53. Max’s Favorite Stories
• My Mom is Gone - A plea by a son for
his mom to start writing again.
• Z is for Zed - A zombie story about a
guy trapped in a portapotty
• The entire USS Ficly series

54. Any questions about
Ficly?

55. http://ficly.com

56. Teaching Kids to
Program

57. Get a Book
• Learn to Program by Chris Pine is an
excellent introduction to programming
languages (http://pragprog.com/titles/ltp2/
learn-to-program-2nd-edition) in general
and Ruby in particular.
• Max read it and went through most of the
tutorials in a couple days and had fun doing
it.

58. What Did He Learn?
• Basic loops and controls
• Math
• Echoing strings
• Writing programs to “say” things

59. Other Things Max and I
Have Built
• A MadLib generator
• Frank, the Turing test failing, question
answering little computer person

60. Let’s meet Frank!
http://frank.ficly.com

61. The Possibilities Are
Endless

62. Architecture?
• Google Sketchup (http://
sketchup.google.com/)
• Allows you to easily create floor plans and
3D models of buildings

63. Animation?
• If you want to get hardcore, check out
Blender or Processing:
• http://blender.org
• http://processing.org

64. Audio and Music?
• SuperCollider: http://www.audiosynth.com/
• Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

65. Hardware Hacking?
• Arduino: http://arduino.cc
• Make Magazine: http://makezine.com

66. Building Your Own
Games?
• Unity: http://unity3d.com
• GameSalad: http://gamesalad.com/

67. Conclusion
• There’s a universe of possibilities out there
for creative self-expression.
• There’s no limit on creativity and the tools
have never been easier to find and use to
build whatever you want.
• It’s all about fun. If you’re not having fun,
you’re doing it wrong.

68. Anything you want to
add, Max?

69. Questions?

70. Thanks!

71. Max & Kevin Lawver

72. Contact Stuff
• Kevin’s Blog: http://lawver.net
• Max’s Blog: http://maxisweird.com
• E-Mail: kevin@lawver.net
• Twitter: @kplawver