This page provides descriptions and links for the Digital Media Micro Lessons (DMMLs) that will train you how to use fifteen (15) different browser-based digital media software programs, plus eight introductory videos that explain the rules and expectations of the Cosmic Creator Challenge.
Basic Process for the Cosmic Creator Challenge:
You are expected to watch all eight of the introductory videos before moving on to learn a media design software program of your choice. You first need to download the Game Form for the introductory videos (see the link below) and fill out the form with the blinking letters in the videos. Once you see the hidden message, you must follow its instructions with your teacher in order to continue on to learn the software of your choice. to learn the software, watch all of the required videos in order and complete the practice projects, including the secret messages. You teacher will know that you have watched the videos by seeing what you added to your practice projects according to the hidden messages.
Once you have completed the required Digital Media Micro Lessons and practice projects for your software, you will have the skills needed to start working on your Cosmic Creator Challenge project. You have three dimensions of choice. First, you will need to choose a topic from the sixth grade science standards (Strand 6.1) on objects in the solar system including their orbits, scales, proportions, properties, phases of the moon, eclipses, and the seasons. Second, once you choose a topic, you choose your medium or software and learn in using the Digital Media Micro Lessons. Third, you choose an approach (see the list in the diagram above) and begin to plan out and design your project. Once completed, three of your classmates will evaluate your project using the Peer Critique form found on the Forms & Rules page. Then you will look at their comments and suggestions, revise and improve your project, and present it a second time to your teacher for their final score.
Your teacher will send your project, if it scores high enough on the five judging criteria (scientific accuracy, creativity, quality, software skill, and science communication ability), on to Clark Planetarium by Dec. 20th where it will be judged by the Education Staff. Winning students in the eight media categories will be invited to an award ceremony at the planetarium in mid-February.
The Digital Media Micro Lessons are linked below. As they are completed, they will be added to this page so please check back frequently. Start with the introductory videos. If the DMMLs for your chosen software are not available yet, you can still go to the Training Videos page and watch the longer format videos for many of the software programs, or you can watch other training videos for these software programs on YouTube or elsewhere. All projects for the Cosmic Creator Challenge must include at least some components of digital media creation – you can, for example, draw parts of your project by hand using fine art skills, but it must be scanned into a computer and completed using digital media software. This is the main purpose of this Challenge: to combine digital media creation skills with space science content knowledge.
Digital Media Micro Lessons:
Introductory Videos (please watch all eight):
These introductory videos will introduce you to the Cosmic Creator Challenge and how to use these Digital Media Micro Lessons. Watch all eight of these in order and fill the blinking letters on the game sheet at right to discovery the hidden message. To prove that you have watched these videos and certify that you are ready to move on to learn your chosen software, please follow the instructions of the hidden message and give the results to your teacher, who will send it on to David Black at Clark Planetarium (DVBlack@slco.org).
Gives a brief overview of the Cosmic Creator Challenge and the purpose of these Digital Media Micro Lesson videos. Here is a PDF of the lesson you can read or print out:
Introduces myself (David Black) and Clark Planetarium and goes over the basic rules of the Cosmic Creator Challenge and how students will create their own digital media using three-dimensional choice and be judged by their peers, with the best projects displayed on the third floor of the Planetarium. Here is the lesson’s script as a PDF you can read or download:
This video goes over the three dimensions of student choice in the Cosmic Creator Challenge – choice of topic from the sixth grade space science standards (6.1.1, 6.1.2, and 6.1.3); choice of medium (digital image, desktop publishing, audio, video, animation, interactive, presentation, or 3D); and choice of approach. Here is the PDF to read or download:
This video gives more information of the eight categories of software and shows some of the approaches available for each. The categories are: (1) digital image, such a diagram or graphic novel; (2) desktop publishing or written, such as brochures, newsletters, and infographics; (3) audio files, including podcasts and interviews; (4) video projects, such as PSAs, narrative films, documentaries, and broadcast news reports; (5) interactive files, such as games or websites; (6) animations, including stop-motion, 2D, and 3D; (7) presentations, including slide shows and animated frames; and (8) 3D models with captions. For each medium, there are many approaches as shown in the diagram at the top of this page. Here is the PDF of the lesson script to read or print:
This videos walks you through how to use 3D choice to pick your own project and shows you the many possibilities for combining topic, medium, and approach. It shows an example of a graphic novel approach for creating digital images of solar system exploration. Here is the lesson PDF:
This video explains how peer critique works for you to receive feedback on your projects for the Cosmic Creator Challenge. You will divide into teams of four so that three peers will evaluate your project and your will evaluate theirs. Projects will be judged on five criteria: (1) scientific accuracy, or how detailed and accurate your knowledge of your topic is; (2) creativity, or how unique and unusual your approach is – not just another poster or powerpoint slide show; (3) quality, including the effort put into your project and its aesthetics and design skills; (4) software proficiency, or how well you have mastered using your chosen design software; and (5) science communication ability, or how well you use showmanship, vocal presentation skills, and other techniques to convey your message. Here is the lesson script as a PDF:
This video continues to discuss how the peer critique will work. You will use a Google Form (a link is found on the Forms & Rules page) and evaluate each student’s project on the five criteria discussed in the previous video: scientific accuracy, creativity, quality, software proficiency, and science communication ability. These will be ranked on a 0 to 4 scale, with 0 indicating the project doesn’t show any mastery yet; a 1 meaning that the skill is just beginning to develop but still needs many details; a 2 means the skill is coming along but isn’t quite complete yet; a 3 means the skill has been mastered and all expectations have been met; and a 4 means the student has gone beyond mastery to show true excellence and professionalism. Here is the lesson script PDF for you to read or print:
This final introductory video shows examples of student projects, including how they were picked using 3D choice. You can choose to make similar projects or try something completely new and unique. You may use any of the software programs being taught here with these Digital Media Micro Lessons or choose any other digital media software you are familiar with. Some topics lend themselves to certain approaches, and some software is easier to learn than others. For the Cosmic Creator Challenge, we will provide additional awards to students who learn more than one software or watch more than the required videos. Remember that your goal is to create an excellent, creative, detailed project on one of the sixth grade space science standards regarding objects in the solar system. You can focus in on one planet or even one moon, or talk about the solar system as a whole. Think outside of the box! Here is the lesson’s script as a PDF:
Now that you have watched all eight introductory videos, remember to write down the blinking letters in the right order and follow the hidden message’s instructions. The game sheet for these intro videos is the image above right, which you can download and print out.
Photopea Videos (watch 12 out of 18):
Photopea is an image processing program based on changing and layering pixels similar to Adobe Photoshop. It is the foundational program for creating the content for most of the other media design software programs here and is therefore important to learn.
Photopea Lesson A: Basics: This video shows how to use the basic tools and features of Photopea, including how to use the brush tool, color picker, selection tools (marquee and lasso), layers, masks, and filters to make an artistic masterpiece, then ruin it by throwing Jell-o at the art.
Photopea Lesson B: Making Memes: This second Photopea tutorial teaches you how to use the text tool, magic wand, and fill menu to create the text for a meme.
Photopea Lesson C: Cleaning Line Art: This lesson will teach you how to plan, create, and clean up a line art image to use for a page of a digital comic book or graphic novel. Using the brush and eraser tools in Photopea, you can clean up and fix mistakes in a line-art image drawn and inked by hand. Your next step is to add color.
Photopea Lesson D: Adding Color and Gradients: This lesson takes the next step for creating a page for a digital comic book or graphic novel by showing you how to select areas and add solid colors and gradients to them, then use the dodge and burn tools to create highlights and shadows.
Photopea Lesson E: 3D Effects with Gradients: This lesson shows you how to use the gradient tool to create 3D effects such as cylinders and spheres to make your digital comic book or graphic novel more realistic.
Photopea Lesson F: Adding Images as Textures: In this video, you will learn how to fill in areas of your comic book or graphic novel pages with textures that come from photographs, such as stars and nebulas, rocks, wood, or other natural textures. You will add more realism with the dodge and burn tool to create highlights and shadows.
SculptGL Videos: (watch 6 out of 8):
SculptGL is a free-form 3D modeling program that starts with a digital ball of clay and allows you to model any shape and combine different shapes together. It also has tools for painting textures on the objects.
Tinkercad Videos (watch 4 out of 6):
Tinkercad is another free browser-based (online) 3D modeling program that is designed to be extremely usable by students and teachers, as you can sign up for it as a class. It has features such as an array of pre-designed objects and Boolean commands that SculptGL does not. When objects are saved as .OBJ, they can be moved back and forth with SculptGL to use the best features of both programs.
Scratch Videos (watch 9 out of 11):
Scratch is a programming environment developed by MIT to be easily understood and useful for younger students in elementary grades and above. Using modular programming bricks, it can build sophisticated games and linear animations. These DMML videos will teach you the basics, and one you have then down you can find games that other people have created and use them as models, decompiling their code to create your own variations.
Wick Editor Videos (watch 5 out of 6):
Wick Editor is a completely free and online animation and interactive design software similar to Adobe Flash before it became Adobe Animate. It can create keyframes with tweened animations, build in pauses and rollover effects on buttons, and link between frames. Its animations and interactive projects can be saved in HTML format as websites or as GIF or MOV formats as linear videos.
Animaker Videos (watch all four):
Animaker and Powtoons are two similar animated presentation software programs. Although some features require a subscription, the basic features and some content are free. You can add characters with pre-saved animations, transitions, moving text, and many features to create eye-catching animations that go beyond the usual boring Powerpoint slide show.
Voki Videos (watch 4 out of 5):
Voki uses text-to-speech technology to take your typed words and turn them into spoken audio using different voices. It can combine these with characters, props, and backgrounds to make “talking head” spoken videos.
Canva Videos (watch 5 out of 7):
Canva is an all-purpose desktop publishing and video software program. You can use it to make invitations, brochures, newsletters, videos, and other types of digital media, with many templates and content files available. You can import your own images and videos and edit them together in Canva.
StoryBoardThat Videos (watch 4 out of 5):
This program does one thing well: it creates comic strips. You can choose from a wide variety of characters, backgrounds, props, text balloon styles, and change their colors, poses, and parameters. All aspects of each object can be edited, and text added.
Easel.ly Videos (watch 4 out of 6):
Easel.ly and Piktochart are two programs for creating infographics, or posters that combine photos, text, charts, and graphs. There are many pre-designed templates and you can import your own graphics.
Audacity Videos (watch 4 out of 5):
Audacity is not a browser-based program and must be installed on a local computer, but it is free and quite powerful for editing, splicing, and cleaning up audio files including reducing noise, cutting out bad sounds, increasing audio, and adding effects such as reverb.
Inkscape Videos (watch 6 out of 8):
Inkscape is not browser-based and must be downloaded and installed on a local machine, but it is free and very powerful, able to do some things better than commercial software such as Adobe Illustrator. It is an image creation software that uses vector shapes (Bezier objects) instead of pixels. The resulting graphics are resizable without loss of quality and take up much less space than pixel-based graphics. There are a few online vector-based programs such as BoxySVG or Vectr, but they are fairly basic and lack the tools and depth of Inkscape.
We Video Videos (watch 10 out of 15):
We Video is a video-editing software program that is designed for school and classroom use. The basic program is free and can create and edit videos online, including using green screen, text, audio clips, animations, and video clips. Paying for the pro or classroom version unlocks may pre-designed video clips and effects, but the basic program can do all the needed functions of editing videos together with text.
Prezi Videos (watch 4 out of 5):
Prezi is an animated presentation software that breaks out of the slide show mode to create linked images that zoom in and out of a larger schematic diagram. The completed presentations are engaging and fun.
Spline Videos (watch 7 out of 11):
Spline is another online 3D modeler that allows easy creation of shapes and Boolean objects. The pro version, for a subscription fee, allows creating animations and building interactive 3D websites, but the free version is still powerful and easy to master for making a variety of objects.
The Creative Science Classroom 