Technology, a class and a part of life.

Dear Readers,

throughout the year we have been exploring free open source programming, starting with Pure Data (PureData (en), Pure Data — PD Community Site) and become so deeply immersed in it’s programming that we used it for special effects at the Seabury Showcase. We also used windows movie maker, Audacity and AVI converter for the show.

Since then we have touched lightly on the photoshop program GIMP 2 (GIMP – The GNU Image Manipulation Program) and several other open source programs: such as Context Free Art (Context Free Art), Hackety Hack (No illegal programing 🙂 ( Hackety Hack! )), paint (Paint.NET – Free Software for Digital Photo Editing), Processing (Processing.org ), Alchemy (Alchemy | An open drawing project), and Inkscape (Inkscape. Draw Freely.), Sketchup 8 (Google SketchUp), Synthesia (Synthesia, Piano for Everyone), and West Point Bridge Designer (http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/download.htm).

We have, however, begun to work on simple machinery using the Arduino robot kit (http://www.arduino.cc/) which comes with a simple computer with the same amount of power as the programming that guided astronauts to thee moon on the Apollo 11. Thanks to our tech teacher, Adam Brock, and students with an equal amount of enthusiasm, this is where we are. Although many of these programs we have not yet mastered, this is where we are.

D.I.D.

Welcome Viewers of this fabulous website,

Please be prepared for a reading of serenity* and absorption . This is JY signing in.

This past week we have met a very awesome lady from the Tacoma Rotary Exchange program named Carly. She is from South Africa and when she was 16, she went up to the United States and participated in the Rotary Exchange Program. The Rotary Exchange Program is a great opportunity that lets you travel around the world and live with a host family for either 3 months, 6 months, and 11 months. We saw a video that showed teens from the US traveling to places such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and many more fun, exciting places. Plus, the best part was that she gave us lot’s of tasty candy from South Africa. 🙂

That was the highlight of Tuesday, plus we have a whole load of projects that we have to work on. We have Science Fair Project, Biography Project, Independent Work Project, and a Tech Project! We are working like pack mules to hopefully get these finished before time.

On Wednesday, we went to the YMCA like usual, had our three blocks, and had a fabulous afternoon of French, Tech, and working on our Biography Projects.

On Thursday, we were snowed in!!!! No School!!!!!

And Friday, after our 2 hour delay, we split up into two groups and one group went to Yoga while the other one took a stroll in Wright Park. In the evening, we had French and Tech and caught up on our Projects.

Well, that concludes our short little week consisting of 3 days. Hopefully you LOVED my column, and this is JY, signing off. Try not to cry, I will be back. 🙂

GIMP Pop Art!

Hi this is HS,

Over this past week the students have been learning a new photo editing software called GIMP. It is a free software that Adam Brock (our middle school tech teacher) found and taught the students about. It is a very complicated process to complete newly edited photo. In GIMP, students have a wide range of editing tools to create an amazing picture such as painting backgrounds of photos with colors, inverting the colors from the original photos and use blurring tools to make the image look like it is floating.

Showcase

This is JT, this is my first time blogging and this post is on Seabury’s amazing showcase last Friday.

The showcase displayed our main projects, trips and developments such as our comparative religion study.

In addition to the academic displays there were also performances by Seabury’s two garage bands, Monday and Thursday, which excited and amazed the crowd.

But the music wasn’t the only thing that made the performances awesome because there were some incredible visuals produced by the students in an open source program known as Pure Data (PD for short) and controlled by students.

Note from Halley: We counted about 80 people that night – thank you so much to everyone who came out to support our middle schoolers!

The performances were awesome and we hope to have a video available on Youtube sometime next week (once Adam works his editing magic).

In the meantime, visit http://www.youtube.com/seaburyschool to see our kid’s fantastic “Don’t Run Away” videos that caught the attention of the mayor!

(Photo courtesy of KC).