Monday, August 26th

Class Hours: 10:05 – 2:45
Mr. Cronin

Notes

Welcome to CAWD 2025!
I am Mr. Cronin
- Born in NYC
- Lived 99% of my life in Vermont
- Went to Farleigh Dickinson University for bachelors degree
- Went to Champlain College for graduate degree
- Lives in Underhill with family
- Has 2 dogs, cat, and lots of chickens
Let’s start with a review of the day…

10:05 Attendance

10:10 Day 1 Stuff

Your personal workstation
Do our EWSD Google accounts work?
- If you were here last year your accounts should just “work”
- If you new to us your email address will be in the following structure:
  - first initial + last name + @vt.ewsd.org
  - default password of 12345678
Bathrooms / Drinks / Breaks / Lunch / Food
Handbook / Handbook form
Day 1 Windows Tweaks
- Class homepage
- Finding the Public
Getting some art supplies in our art cups
- Marker paper vs. Sketchbook paper
- leave the markers / pastels in the centralized location, but use whenever
- take the pencils / colored pencils / erasers
- pencil sharpener

10:40 Downloading and Installing Blender 4.2

Blender is our main 3D art and design tool. It is free, and a new version came out this summer that we want to download and install. Let’s do this together today – and you can down this at home if you haven’t already! Navigate to https://www.blender.org/.

10:50 Morning Break (10 minutes)

11:00 Lego Building

This morning we are going to work on a procedural activity – low key, so everyone can drift into their own world for a little bit. Meeting new people for an entire day can be hard – even for me.

In this exercise we are looking are your ability to:

Ability to follow a procedure and meet the goal
Solving your own problems
Working clean

11:30 Schedules – How does the day and week work?

Our main focus is today. What seems different initially is normal soon. Don’t stress.

11:45 Blender Introduction

UI
Creating an ice cream cone
Saving the Blender file for future use and editing

12:20 Walk down to the cafeteria together…

12:25 Lunch

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.

12:55 Attendance and Article

At morning attendance (starting tomorrow) and after attendance after lunch, we are always going to start by reading an article. After I read and you follow along, I will go around to random students and ask for the following (think about these prompts as we read):

What are 2 facts from the article – objective, main ideas that were written by the author.
What is a question you would ask the author – that was not answered in the article.

Today I will model the entire process, and tomorrow you will start.

1:00 A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow is a reader’s dream — a wonder-full, nuanced story full of wit, insight, and imagination.

Read along with Mr. Cronin. Improve literacy, word decoding, enjoy a nice story, and unplug from the world.

1:20 Afternoon Break (10 minutes)

1:30 Speed Design

Speed Designs are 10 minute sprints in CAWD where we practice. It could be any medium – 3D, 2D, video, programming, etc.

To get into the swing of things, today we are going to take our Ice Cream Cone project we started this morning, create a render (a picture of your work), and learn how to share on our Public Drive for display. Daily in CAWD you will be creating, presenting, getting feedback – just like in the real world – and these are called “Dailies“.

1:45 Summer Soda Cup Step-By-Step

Step-by-steps in CAWD are where we create and build together. What I build on the big boards, you build on your screen.

Today we are going to create a classic take out “drink cup”, be it for soda, milkshake, bubble tea, whatever. We are going to continue to practice and learn new skills with each project.

2:15 Dailies

Dailies are end of day presentations where every day you will show off something you worked on that day. Today we are going to all create renders of our soda cup to show off to the class. Always save your work as your last name so we don’t overwrite each others art when in the shared Public drive.

2:20 End of Day Creating in our Sketchbook

We are almost done day 1 – and survived!

For the last 15 minutes of today I want to use some of the art supplies we have in the room and create. Go to page 1 of our sketchbooks and create something, anything. Use pencils, markers, alcohol markers (if you staple in a piece of marker pad into your sketchbook), crayons, pastels – whatever. I am going to put some music on and we are going to take 15 minutes to be creative and … not talk and be put on the spot. Deal?

2:35 / 2:40 Dismissal

At 2:35 today we are going to practice our end of day procedure:

Turn everything off / get your station back to how it looked when you walked in the door.
Pack and take home schedule, handbook (remember you need to review as you have agreed to it), and sketchbook. The sketchbook never stays overnight in CAWD, it is really for homework, but I would recommend having in your backpack so you have it.
I will walk students down today to where the busses will leave. Typically you will be dismissed at 2:40, but today is Day 1 so we will go early. You can’t dilly-dally at the end of the day, as you will miss your bus.
Take all drinks nightly – the janitors will clean the drink shelf every Friday afternoon and throw out anything left behind.