SXSW 2011: Onwards to the future!

Thank you to everyone checking on this site after my SXSW 2011 presentation. I had a lot of fun giving my solo presentation and I'll be working hard to come up with another for next year. I met a lot of wonderful folks who I'll be keeping in touch with. I'd say the project's 5 Year Anniversary is off to a very good start!

As you can tell, I don't use this blog much anymore. I've switched to using the project's Facebook and Twitter accounts for most updates and communications. So look there for the latest photos, videos, and information.

With SXSW behind me, I'll be turning my focus to the other events that are coming up. They include:

April:
Presentation at the Pop Culture Association, San Antonio, TX

July:
Workshop at the Conference for the Advancement of Math Teaching, Grapevine, TX
"Make a Manga Tournament!" at Otakon, Baltimore, MD (pending)

I'll also be submitting proposals for SXSW Interactive 2012 and NCTM 2012, due this year. Given the project's long history with libraries, I'll also be considering submissions to ALA and TLA for 2012.

See you at SXSW Interactive 2011!

The Create a Comic Project will be going to SXSW Interactive 2011! My solo presentation, "Interactive Comics: Techniques to Enhance Math Education," will be an hour long and combine several of my previous presentations on the comic project and math. It's the single biggest event in the project's history, so I am very excited to be given this opportunity!

Only 500 sessions from the 2400 submissions were selected, so I'm very pleased that SXSW chose mine to be among them. Other educators that will be presenting include Chris Lehmann, founder of the Science Leadership Academy, and Nina Walia of PBS Kids.

Create a Comic Project Music Video

I recently put together a little music video about the comic project. It mainly uses clips from New Haven with several from Pittsburgh thrown in. I also featured some clips that haven't been uploaded before, including one from the third tournament and from Otakon 2009. Enjoy!

Otakon 2009 Workshop Info

I've received the times and locations of my workshops at Otakon. It turns out they want me to host the same session twice, so I was given two slots.

Title: "Make a Manga!"
Room: Workshop 2
Time 1: Friday, 4 - 6 PM
Time 2: Saturday, 12 - 2 PM

My co-hosts will include Erin Ptah (And Shine Heaven Now) and Kittyhawk (Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki).

There's room for as many as 150 people, so I'm going to be doing some major prep work for these. No info on when my panel will be yet.

Session Cancellations

A nasty cold has managed to knock me out for this week. As a result, the 6/29 & 6/30 Collegiate YMCA sessions, 7/1 Northland Library session, and 7/2 Allegheny YMCA sessions are all cancelled. I'm not canceling the 7/1 Western YMCA sessions because they're my hardest working group.

6/23/09 Session Postponed

Due to a change in the site's schedule, the 6/23 session at the Collegiate YMCA is tentatively scheduled to take place Thursday, 6/25, in the afternoon. This is a one time alteration.

6/22/09 Collegiate YMCA Session Report

As expected, the round robin writing activity went well. There were 13 kids in all, as I only had 1 group of the older kids. There were too few younger kids to have their own group, so I didn't work with them this time. Stats will be posted soon.

6/22/09 Collegiate YMCA Session

This session takes a break from the normal routine and has the kids doing a Round Robin Writing activity. The activity has kids only doing one panel of a comic, then passing it to the right for the next person to finish, and so on. The idea is to tell a story as a group. I've used it before with success and I think the kids will enjoy some group work.

6/18/09 Allegheny YMCA Session Report

The 6/18 session went well. There were two groups: 8-9 and 10-12 year olds, with 9 and 10 kids in each, respectively. I may have made the difficulty a little high for them, so I'll ratchet that back next week. I also made contact with the Citipark's Roving Art Cart, who expressed interest in adding the comic project to their program. Hopefully I can find the time! I'll post stats soon.

6/18/09 Allegheny YMCA Session

The 6/18 session at Allegheny will focus on layouts. Unlike the other YMCA sessions, Allegheny uses a building owned by the Pittsburgh city parks instead of their own.

Comics used:

Annie
Diesel Sweeties
Geeks Next Door
Goats
Krakow
Nothing Nice to Say
Penny & Aggie
Scary Go Round
Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki
Shortpacked
Tsunami Channel

6/17/09 Northland Library Session Report

The 6/17 Northland Library session was plagued by inclement weather: I had to drive through a severe thunderstorm on my way there, causing a delay to the beginning. Fortunately, 12 students were still waiting for me. I lead them through a simple layout activity. Unlike my other groups, most of the kids were artists, not writers. I'll be adjusting future lessons to work more on art and storytelling over comic mechanics and basics.

6/17/09 Western YMCA Session Report

The 6/17 Western YMCA session was even larger than anticipated! Originally, I was told to expect 15, 20, and 25 as the maximums for the three age groups. However, in this session, I had 17, 21, and 23 students, respectively. I'll be adjusting my preparations to account for these large numbers. The kids all enjoyed the activities; the younger kids adapted very well to the multi-page comics, so I'll be continuing that next week. I'll post stats soon.

6/17/09 Northland Library Session

The Northland Library will be with my oldest group to date: teenagers of 13-18. I'm going to start them out on layouts, see how they are, and then go from there.

Comics used:

Cool Cat Studio
Dicebox
Kastle Comics
Marilith
Narbonic
Octopus Pie
Path
Prophecy
Questionable Content
Skin Horse
Staccato
Unshelved
Verses Versus

6/17/09 Western YMCA Session

I've decided to do something unorthodox with the Western Area YMCA kids: instead of having all 3 groups on the same track, one of them (the 10 year olds) will be on a faster track then the other two. I'm doing this since the 10-year olds seem extremely capable and fond of the activity, so I want to push them harder than I would normally to see if I can get them to excel.

For the younger kids, I'm going to start them on personalities and multi-page stories, starting with tiny 2-3 page arcs. The other two will be covering word bubbles and symbolia.

Comics used:

And Shine Heaven Now
Animenifesto
Awkward Zombie
Diesel Sweeties
Flipside
Geebas on Parade
Geist Panik
Hookie Dookie Panik
Jar
No Pink Ponies
Okashina Okashi
Paradox Lost
Piled Higher and Deeper
Questionable Content
Sketchies
Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki
Sticky Floors
Tea Club
Tin
Venus Envy

6/16/09 Session Report

As with the 6/15 session, the kids were in two groups; I had 10 in one and 13 in the other. I altered the warm-up template set for the younger kids and this worked well. The main activity templates were still a bit difficult for them. The quantity was good for both groups, as slower kids could still finish them while faster kids would often complete 2 or 3 whole sets. Stats will be posted soon.

6/16/09 Session

The 6/16 session will focus on Symbolia. As a fun activity, the kids will draw their own symbols and then have their neighbors use those symbols in their comics. This will help provide some increased between-student interaction that may get them more energized.

Comics used:

And Shine Heaven Now
Dicebox
Ghost Hunters
Mac Hall
No Pink Ponies
Phoenix
Questionable Content
Shortpacked
School of Rejects
Zombies Calling

6/15/09 Session Report

The 6/15 Collegiate YMCA session went well. This time there were two sessions of different age groups; I had 9 in the first and 12 in the second. The first group was younger than planned (8-10 instead of 9-10) due to the low numbers this early on, so I'll need to adjust the difficulty in later sessions, especially in the type of warm-up templates I use.

Stats will be posted soon. As mentioned before, I can't take pictures or video of the children.

6/15/09 Session

The 6/15 session will be split into two groups at the Collegiate YMCA, similar to summer 2008. I'll be going over word bubbles, as I noted the kids struggled to identify special bubbles - especially spiky ones - as ones to fill in.

Comics used:

And Shine Heaven Now
Jar
Kastle Comics
Lil' Mell
Mystic Revolution
Piled Higher and Deeper
School of Rejects
Sticky Floors

6/10/09 Western Area YMCA Session

The Western Area YMCA will be broken into three groups by age: 10, 11, and 12-14 year olds. Like the first Collegiate YMCA session, I'll be teaching them about layouts first as an easy introduction to the project.

Comics used:

8-Bit Theater
A Girl and Her Fed
And Shine Heaven Now
Annie
Applegeeks
Awkward Zombie
Chugworth Academy
Devil's Panties
Geebas on Parade
Goats
Hate Song
I Come From Mars
Jar
Mac Hall
Narbonic
Nothing Nice to Say
Piled Higher and Deeper
Planet Karen
Questionable Content
Seasons of Constancy
Simulated Comic Product
Sticky Floors
Stubble
Sugar Bits
Tea Club
Tsunami Channel
World of Orenda

6/8/09 Session Report

The 6/8 session was only a single meeting with 10 kids. Normal sessions will be two groups of 10-15. The difficulty of the warm-up and activity were fine, but there may have been too many total. I'll try and shorten it in future lessons.

A couple of the kids were from last summer, but many were new, so it's a good thing I'm starting from the beginning. They seemed able to focus on the tasks with minimal acting up, so it's a good group. I'm looking forward to working with them.

Stats will be posted soon.