How do you write a story? Do you start with the characters or do you start at the very end? If you're having trouble, you can always use the structure that Esther Pearl used with the R.O.C.K. Tech Lab! "Once Upon A Time ..." can be the beginning of any story about a person, an alien, an object, an animal, or whatever your heart desires. Esther, who is Founder of Camp Reel Stories and former Art Department Director at Pixar (!), also taught us how to storyboard; she ensured us that we don't have to be great artists to be a good storyboarder. Index cards and a creative mind are all you need to make a great story!
Millionaires Club is an awesome product of a partnership between PWC and R.O.C.K. Beacon. Wonderful volunteers come from PWC every Friday to teach our R.O.C.K. Tech Lab students about business planning and financial literacy. Last semester, two of our teams competed with the rest of the SF Beacon sites; their ideas were "Spy Glass" and "Food Away". "Spy Glass" is a pair of glasses that have the capabilities of Google glass but they are cooler and less chunky on your face. "Food Away" is a grocery store that is similar to Whole Foods in that they focus on healthy food, yet when you check-out, you have the option to donate $20 worth of groceries to someone in need. Our students can't wait for Millionaire's Club to start agin on 2/26!
Have you ever made a movie on an iPad using clay characters!? Our students have! Five lucky students got to visit the Children's Creativity Museum and put their pre-made story boards into action. They learned how to make claymation films in teams after creating their characters out of clay. Then, they made their 20-30 second films by taking hundreds and hundreds of pictures on their iPads! This field trip was followed by some yummy In & Out; it was a great, great day.
Today's Future Sound came to the R.O.C.K. Tech Lab last semester to show our students how to make their own beats! Thanks to Marlon, Kevin, Tim, and Chris, the R.O.C.K. Tech students learned about tempo, high hats and snares, were able to experiment with DJ pads and keyboards, and created an awesome finished product in a team -- their own song with their own beats. We hope to work with them again this semester and we hope our new Tech Assistant, Tatyana, will continue teaching our students how to make their own music.
GooOOoOoooo Bears! The UC Berkeley California Golden Overtones put on an incredible a cappella benefit concert for the R.O.C.K. Tech Lab last semester. They featured other UC Berkeley a cappella groups such as Decadence and the UC Men's Octet, and before the show Yogurtland gave us free frozen yogurt! A huge thank you to the UC Berkley a cappella community for putting on a bomb show for us!
This was one of the coolest workshops the R.O.C.K. Tech Lab has EVER done! Rock Project came back to Vis and taught our students how to play the basics of many instruments including: guitar, bass, ukulele, and the keyboard. Rock Project students and instructors teamed up to teach our students through 1:1 lesson rotations -- 15 minutes per instrument. We got to see how to hold the instruments, how to play some notes, and how to experiment with these instruments! Our students absolutely loved this and we're very much looking forward to having Shark and the Rock Project team back to work with us!
Who is your favorite rock and roll band!? Kiss? Nirvana? Queen? How about The Rolling Stones? These rad 14-17 year old students at Rock Project are playing all sorts of rock and roll! Last semester, they came to put on an incredible rock show for our students. While it was super loud and we needed ear phones, we were blown away by their talent and natural musical abilities!
The Google field trip was fantastic, thanks to Greg, awesome employee at Google! As soon as we got to the campus, we went to the Google Visitor’s Center where we all played and had a "ball" (pun intended!). There were massage chairs, a mini golf hole, a ball pit, and more! After we explored the Visitor’s Center, we built systems with bright LED lights; we used certain wires and learned how important connectivity is for these projects. We also helped each other out when one of us had issues. Afterwards, we walked around the outside of the campus; it was a lovely day at Google!
The average American child spends an average of 7 1/2 hours per DAY consuming media. That includes: TV, movies, books, magazines, phones, etc. In this useful workshop with Reza Harris of 5Elements (and his partner Juana, a community leader in Oakland) we looked at media critically and observed what kinds of messages we are being given. We discussed racism, sexism, ableism, and more; we talked about how these isms exist in media all the time, every day. We need to be wary of the media we see and we need to ask questions -- we need to speak up when something doesn't feel right. Thank you to Reza and Juana for leading this incredible workshop!
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