4/24/09 Session Canceled

The 4/24 session was canceled due to time issues on my end. I'll be traveling on 5/1, so the next session won't be until 5/8.

I found out the 4/17 session had been canceled due to the others traveling to a YMCA conference of some sort.

4/17/09 Session Canceled

For unknown reasons, the YMCA After-school program for 4/17 was canceled. I'll be holding the lesson on the 24th instead.

1/23/09 Session Photos

Here are the pictures from the 1/23 session.

1/23/09 Session

Comic Project Sessions this Summer

I've been working on getting my summer schedule for the comic project done. I'm going to be working with multiple YMCA Summer Camps this year, including the Collegiate YMCA I did last year, and the Northland Library.

All of them are finalizing their summer schedules, so this is the optimal time for reaching out to them. Since I started so late in the summer with the Collegiate YMCA, they had to "shoe horn" me into the schedule, which lead to time issues. By being part of the schedule from the beginning, those issues shouldn't arise.

So far, my summer schedule looks like this:

Monday and Tuesday - Collegiate YMCA
Wednesday, 6:30 PM - 8 PM - Northland Library
Thursday mornings - Allegheny YMCA
Friday, 10 AM - 1 PM - Western Area YMCA

I'm not sure what time of day the Collegiate YMCA will allocate for me; Allegheny is working on exact times. I'm waiting for word from two other YMCA Summer Camps, who I'm hoping to schedule sometime on Wednesday and/or Thursday afternoons.

At Northland, I'll be working with a small group of teens (10-12 of them) . There are also plans for a workshop with a large group of teens (~50) on June 29th.

Current estimates for how many students I'll be working with vary. Collegiate YMCA and Allegheny will put me with two groups of ~20 each. Western Area has 3 groups of ~20 each. So I'm looking at 40 kids at two sites and 60 at the other, for 140 total, or 150 when you include Northland Library.

This should be a very fun time!

Michael Poe Joins!

This, for me, is a huge get for the comic project: Michael Poe, creator of Exploitation Now and Errant Story, has agreed to let me use his work for the comic project!

Exploitation Now was one of the first webcomics I ever read (alongside several others), so it'll be great to get to share that with my students. Of course, while it'll be easy to find usable images from Errant Story, I have to be more careful with Exploitation. It's called that with good reason!

Maq #041 Joins!

At Tekkoshocon, I got to meet Kim Samson, who drew the "drunken Sailor Moon" pic that's been across the Internet for a while. She's agreed to let me use her webcomic, Maq #041, for the project! I think the kids will like her art style.

(And, no, I'm not going to show them the drunk Sailor Moon pic.)

Tekkoshocon Workshop Stats

Here are the stats from the 4/4 Tekkoshocon Workshop:

Comics collected: 80
Attendance: 16
Student efficiency: 5
Maximum possible: 80
Lesson efficiency: 1.00

The maximum possible was based on an average number handed out. The five from the first hour got about 8 comics each, while those in the last half hour got 3 each.

Tekkoshocon Workshop Report

The Tekkoshocon workshop got mixed results. The key problem was location: Workshop 2 was in the Westin Hotel, far removed from the main convention itself. For example, the workshop before mine only had 1 attendee. I was also up against the Phoenix Wright mock trial, a major event, and lunch hour.

I was fortunate despite these issues: five people participated for the first hour, including two father-daughter pairs. Towards the last half hour, people began coming in early for the following workshop, a Pokemon DS tournament. I allowed them to get good seating in exchange for doing the activity. This got me 11 more people.

I didn't take any video, but I did take pictures. That and stats will be posted soon.

Some lessons learned:

1. The name "Manga and Community Service" isn't very good. I renamed it for my Otakon proposal, "Manga, Literacy, and Children," but that's probably not that good, either. I should play up the workshop's interactive nature.

2. I may have the workshop be a straight up comic creation workshop instead of a classroom simulation. There are enough young people going to cons that it could work.

3. I need to create better advertisements, something flashier.

3/27/09 Session Stats

Here are the stats from the 3/27 session:

Comics collected: 36
Attendance: 2 plus two who only participated halfway = 3
Student efficiency: 12
Maximum possible: 39
Lesson efficiency: 0.92

As stated, this activity only works with kids with high writing skills. I won't use it again with this group, but I may use it in the future.

Tekkoshocon Workshop Setup

The Tekkoshocon workshop is structured as a classroom simulation, where I demo and share lessons learned from working with kids. I use templates left over from the tournament, so for a list of comics used see what I listed for each of the events. In addition to the warm-up, I'll demo the non-linear layout, character traits, long-form, and team racing activities.

Non-linear layout is where I have people assign numbers to the panels out of order and rewrite the comic accordingly. Characters traits has students assign names and personalities to the characters, so they avoid writing everyone the same. Long-form covers multi-page comics by going over outlining and the six questions (who, what, where, etc.). Team racing is a variation of Endurance: two teams try to go through a stack of comics as fast as they can.

4/3/09 Session Canceled

Turns out there's only a half day of school on 4/3, so there isn't any after school program. 4/10 is during their spring break, so no session then, either.

The next session will be on 4/17.