Room 402 (Technovation + Microsoft) updates
Above: Martha, Mackenzie, Dhensel, Iris, Cynthia and Teresa at the top of Lombard Street in San Francisco – May 2012 1) Technovation teams: Last spring, Julie Fetzner and I coached 11 girls through the Technovation competition, a program aimed at inspiring young women to enter tech fields through a mobile app design challenge. We sent … Continue reading
News from Room 402 / Early April, 2012
Above: Kevin and Izzy working on their map projection project on the whiteboard walls Cartography: This course uses mapping to ask questions about how we perceive the world, how images are used to illustrate statistics and tell stories, and how we translate 3D spaces to 2D surfaces. We began the course by drawing outlines of the … Continue reading
Thank you, Sixteen!
Dear Sixteen, Ms. Fay and I found out a week or so ago that, thanks to The Sixteen Project, we will have the opportunity to travel through Southeast Asia this summer to do ethnographic fieldwork – the same type of work you all do in our classes. We’re expecting to visit Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and … Continue reading
News from Room 402 / Mid-March, 2012
Above: The final film in Sixteen is a documentary of a youth subculture. “Bronies” refers to boys (and men) who watch “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.” Game Design: The final challenge concludes on Wednesday! The photo on the homepage of this site is of Maria working on her final game; you can find additional … Continue reading
News from Room 402 / Early February 2012
Above: The iSchool Technovation Challenge team, designing gifts for each other at their first meeting in late January. Our group of 11 girls, 9-11th graders, will compete against teams across the city to design a mobile app for science education. Game Design: We’ve spent the past couple of weeks working on two different challenges – … Continue reading
News from Room 402 / Early January 2012
Above: Storyboarding Dim Sum Documentaries in Sixteen, late December Since the last post, our DonorsChoose project for whiteboard markers was funded and IdeaPaint installed 500 sq ft of whiteboard-surfaced walls throughout the 4th floor (check it out on YouTube here); we held final presentations for cartography, design and Sixteen; and we started a new trimester. … Continue reading
News from Room 402 / Early November 2011
Game Design: We’ve just about to conclude our fourth game design challenge, which was inspired by restaurants! Some of the games designed over the past two weeks played on running delivery routes, earning tips, “cooking” food, rating restaurants and keeping businesses afloat; all of them incorporated some balance of chance, skill and a mechanic that … Continue reading
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