⁠— Day 1 - Set Up and Introduction to Coding: Our primary goal for this day is to assist students in setting up Roblox Studio and to familiarize kids with our camp’s objectives. We’ll start off with a basic introduction to coding and what it can be used for. Students will use the on-click function to change scale, rotation and color of block in Roblox Studio by creating a “program”.

⁠— Day 2 - Loops: Students will learn the differences between while, for, and repeating loops in Roblox to make a dance lobby with cycling colors and alternating text labels.

⁠— Day 3 - Conditionals: We’ll explore how conditionals operate and each student will design their own escape room full of working parts with conditionals set that can teleport or give effects to characters in game.

⁠— Day 4 - Tweens: Tweens are tools that create animation effects on objects in Roblox Studio. By using tweens, students will enhance their project’s aesthetics and add additional fun features to polish their escape rooms.

⁠— Day 5 - Presentation: Through a combination of this week’s lessons, the class will create a giant obstacle course to playtest and each student will create a custom obstacle within it. Obstacles should include scripts for loops, conditionals and tweens. We will then present and playtest our creations!

Connected Camps is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2015 with the mission to build a global online community where kids build, code, play, and learn alongside one another. Our programs are designed based on extensive research in the learning sciences. The founders and leaders of Connected Camps, Mimi Ito and Katie Salen, are professors at the University of California, Irvine, who specialize in the design of online learning experiences that are fun, social, and directly tied to academic outcomes. Learn more about the research behind Connected Camps at the Connected Learning Alliance resource site: https://clalliance.org/ 

One thing that makes our programs unique is our near-peer mentorship model. Our programs are led by young adults and college students, often with the help of high school volunteers. We hire counselors and coaches from top universities in computer science, game development, economics, social studies, and the arts, and train them on how to facilitate project-based learning with younger kids. Our young instructors have the same passion for technology, games, and digital making as our learners, and take on the role of instructors, as well as fellow enthusiasts and relatable role models.

The curriculum for this program was designed by a team of counselors pursuing degrees relevant to the material at hand. The learning experiences in this class are driven by these counselors’ academic expertise in the field, along with their desire to share their passion for the subject with a group of excited learners. All of Connected Camps’ curricula are vetted by the organization’s Product Manager, Matthew, who possesses a Masters in Secondary Education and a deep belief in the power of collaborative virtual learning.