Friday, September 2nd

Class Hours: 9:40 – 2:05
Mr. Cronin

Notes

Friday! Everyone enjoy your long Labor Day weekend. See everyone back on Tuesday of next week.
While nothing assigned in your sketchbook yet, please feel free to start creating. If you fill your sketchbook with good efforts, you get another sketchbook.
Mathieson – you have an early dismissal at 1:45 today.

9:40 Attendance and Article

9:45 Handbook agreement time!

Remember that:

We discussed the handbook and school policies in class.
We had you and your family review it last night digitally or in physical form.
You are agreeing to it.

Something we just have to do.

10:00 The CAWD “Trio” of projects week by week

Once we get into the swing of things, we are going to have 3 projects per week in CAWD that you are going to be responsible for:

Project 1 – The CAWD Project

The CAWD Project is something very specific that I assign you to do. It practices what we are doing that week, what we are learning, what we are doing as a collective.

Example – A 3D Barn in Blender.

Project 2 – The Agency Project

Each week students are going to have self direction (agency) to choose how to demonstrate their CAWD skills. The Agency Project is an independently chosen project related to what we are doing in CAWD.

Example – Anything created in Blender using the skills learned when making the Barn.

Project 3 – Design Homework’s

Each week in your sketchbook you are going to have an assignment – starting next week. Each Quarter we have different DH’s with a goal of building a Portfolio full of work that colleges and employers want to see.

Quarter 1 – Varied topics / getting into the swing of things and practicing sketching.
Quarter 2 – 1, 2, and 3 point Perspective. Direct lessons from Mr. Cronin that we will complete in class, and then the DH will be extending and practicing as homework.
Quarter 3 – Still Life’s. Mr. Cronin starts to get you ready for the real world. I give you YouTube resources that explain the lesson we want you to learn, and then the DH will be extending and practicing as homework.
Quarter 4 – Portraits. Continuing toward learning independently, I give you the topics, and on your own you have to find and document the resources (YouTube) used to learn. The DH will be extending and practicing as homework.

The goal with Design Homework’s over the year are going from hand holding Q1, to being independent learners by Q4. In the real world, you must be comfortable learning independently, so we will practice this in class. This includes finding the right resources.

Let’s see some samples of work so you can get an idea.

10:10 Weekly Workflow and Presentations

We have a week – Monday -> Friday. This week has 3 projects. The work from the week before is due at the start of class of the next week (Monday).

Everyone uploads their 3 projects to a specific location on the public drive. I copy the work down. If in there on time – it is “on time” and receives full credit. (I do this so that the Tuesday have the same deadline as the Monday kids – fair is fair.)

We will be presenting all students work each week. This is a norm in the real world in our industry, and we must become accustomed to it.

Half of the class presents on Monday morning.

Half of the class presents on Tuesday morning.

Students will remain in their seats, I will open the work up on the big boards. Students will have monitors off.

Monday and Tuesday a student will be tasked with giving Constructive Criticism for the projects. Nothing heavy! You will pick 1 element you like about the project, and 1 element you would potentially adjust in the future. We will go over how to give and receive Constructive Criticism well as we get to these events.

In the real world we have to work in teams giving feedback, receiving feedback, and learn how to take it professionally without getting defensive. All of this will be practiced in CAWD.

It is actually a really fun way to see each others work, work as colleagues, and get inspired.

10:20 Work Keys

As part of the year we will be preparing and taking the WorkKeys assessments. The WorkKeys assessments will test your knowledge in the following areas:

We will take the pre test in the fall, and the post test in the spring. It takes about 2 days in the fall (an hour a day), and 2 days in the spring. You can score a 3-7 in each test.

Without getting into specifics for now I will tell you that if you score high enough in the fall you don’t need to take the post test in the spring.

The bonus is that you don’t have to come to school in May for the 2 post tests dates if you score high enough. You get 2 bonus vacation days. This is the best deal I have ever come across in school standardized testing. Get ready to dominate.

More on this to come, but it is on the horizon.

10:30 Skinny Block Reading (starting Q2)

Starting in Q2 we will use the window of time between lunch and our afternoon break for in class readings. I will read aloud and you will follow along. This has been proven to build vocabularies and improve reading stamina.

2nd Quarter – I think we may read “Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway.

3rd Quarter – We have a Mental Health unit and read “One-Minute Mindfulness: 50 Simple Ways to Find Peace, Clarity, and New Possibilities in a Stressed-Out World” by Donald Altman.

4th Quarter – We read “1984” by George Orwell.

Again – starting Q2, so nothing to worry about for now. We are going to use the skinny block during Q1 to get everyone up to speed with short hands on projects.

10:35 Morning Break (10 minutes)

10 Minutes break – you have to exit the room.
When the door near the TV is open, you are welcome to come back in.
For the first week of school we are going to keep the CAWD room open for breaks.

10:45 English

11:35 Word Cloud Bio

This morning we are going to build a Word Cloud Bio of yourself to present right before lunch.

First – create new document 1280 x 720 pixels in size in Photoshop at a resolution of 72.

Place your name on the canvas, nice and big, the star of the show. Use your preferred first name with last name, so “Sparkey Boudreau”.

Next place at least 3 text elements around your name that help define, or represent you. The larger the words the more important they are to you and your life.

Save your file twice as:

“(lastName)Bio.psd“
… and …
“(lastName)Bio.jpg“

… in your “week_01” folder in documents on your computer.

By noon place a copy of your .jpg in the public in the folder called “bio”. When complete turn off your monitor.

When all monitors are off I am going to to present our work on the big boards before we go to lunch, again helping to get know each other in class through a Photoshop Project.

Hit the deadline – you don’t want to be the student that keeps us from having a full lunch!

My example – I went for a monochromatic look with different shades of gray.

12:15 Lunch (30 Minutes)

No food in the room / eat in the Cafe.
You are welcome to return to the room when you have finished eating and work / hang out.

12:45 Attendance and Article

12:50 Blender Introduction

Blender is our 3D creation tool. It is open source (free) and you own the full commercial rights to everything you create in it. It is not educational software.

Today we are going to watch a quick little Demo reel of Blender 3.

Let’s make sure have Blender 3.0 installed, open it up, and make … Suzanne!

While we won’t be doing very much Blender today, I wanted to at least show you one of our main pieces of software for the first semester, and point you to where you can download it. You could have it installed by 4pm today at home and start tinkering.

1:10 Afternoon Break (10 minutes)

10 Minutes break – you have to exit the room.
When the door near the TV is open, you are welcome to come back in.
For the first week of school we are going to keep the CAWD room open for breaks.

1:20 “Trainer” Game / UE5 Introduction

We are going to develop a collaborative CAWD arcade style game. Think of something silly to blow 5 minutes in, as compared to grinding out for 1000 hours.

Some of the projects that you build this semester are going to go right into the game, and then you will get credit. You can say on your resume or college applications that you took part in a team building a game – a credit in your Portfolio.

This game is a framework for development – my goal is taking assets you create and add them in over time. Will include:

Models
Textures
Graphic Design (UI/UX / Icons)
Sounds
Level Design
Leaderboard Design and filtering during Web Design / Dev semester
etc

Very rough – but it is supposed to be. Think of it as a rough draft, pre-alpha. It is version 0.2 currently.

By 1:55 the top 3 scores get prizes! Make sure you use your correct initials for tracking….