UCSD Middle and High School Summer 2010 Science and Technology Workshops

The San Diego Supercomputer Center, at the University of California, San Diego, presents exciting  summer science and technology workshops for middle and high school students in grades 7 - 12.

UCSD Middle and High School Summer 2010 Science and Technology Workshops:

Exploring the World of Digital Art and Design
Monday- Friday, June 28 - July 2, 2010 – 8:30am - 3:00pm
Get ready for a week of digital art and design that will change the way you look at popular arts and media. Workshop instructor Scott Flanders is a freelance illustrator and artist specializing in entertainment art and media including commercial illustration, comic books and conceptual design for film and video games, Scott brings an exciting and contemporary professional approach to digital art and a deep knowledge rooted in the fundamentals of fine art training that will leave participants inspired to stretch their creative muscles and push the boundaries of visual expression!  Students will be exposed to many of the basic techniques and common approaches to digital art and design, including the familiar skills of drawing, painting and composition as synthesized through the digital medium, but also silhouette and contour design, using abstraction in development, and using photographic reference and the basics of image sampling.  Course open to middle and high school students.

Introduction to Matlab: An Interactive Visual Math Experience
Thursday - Friday, July 8 - 9, 2010 - 8:30am - 3:00pm
Matlab is an easy-to-use yet extremely powerful "matrix laboratory", an interactive environment that supports a wide range of mathematical functions, analytical methods, and visualization tools for practically any kind of science problem, enabling you to solve computationally intensive problems faster than with traditional languages. In this workshop, you will get a hands-on introduction to the basics of Matlab's vector math and its scripting language. In this two-day workshop, you will get an introduction to the Matlab interface, matrix mathematics, and 2D plotting the first day. On the second day, you will learn the simple math and complex beauty of fractal geometry, and you will even learn how to use some of Matlab's advanced 3D visualization tools. You will also get a bit of background on other programs similar to Matlab. All Matlab example files will be provided online and available during and following the workshop.  Course open to middle and high school students.

UCSD Biotechnology Academy

Monday- Friday, July 12 - July 16, 2010 – 8:30am - 3:00pm

The workshop series will begin with basic introductory level activities and build on to more advanced topics both in content and equipment requirements. We will cover the basic use and applications of the equipment used. Be one step ahead for your high school biology and chemistry courses!

Course topics include:

• The Basics - DNA Extraction, Size Exclusion, Chromatography
• DNA Analysis 1: DNA Electrophoresis
• DNA Analysis 2: Introduction to PCR
• Nobel Price Winning Science: DNA-RNA-Protein
• Proteins in Action
• Analysis of Proteins: Protein Quantification

 Course open to high school students in grades 10, 11, and 12.

"Full Color Heroes" in Digital Art & Design: Comic Book Coloring!
Monday- Friday, July 15 - 16, 2010 - 8:30am - 3:00pm
Have you ever wondered how they keep all those colors in the lines? Comic coloring is a incredibly useful skill the techniques of which can be applied to digital illustration and graphic design in endless ways to give artists and designers incredible control of color, composition and overall presentation.  Students will be exposed to many of the basic techniques and common approaches to digital art and design, including the familiar skills of drawing, painting and composition as synthesized through the digital medium, but also silhouette and contour design, using abstraction in development, and using photographic reference and the basics of image sampling.
Course open to middle and high school students.

2D – 3D Insani-D!
Monday - Wednesday, July 19 - 21, 2010 - 8:30am - 3:00pm
In this fun and exciting three-day hands-on workshop, students will learn to build cool 2D and 3D interactive animations. On the first day, you'll learn how to use Flash, the powerful 2D animation tool and the most popular tool on the Internet. On the second day you'll learn Blender, the free 3D animation and rendering tool used by many game developers. On the third day, students will get some real hands-on game development experience using the built-in Blender Game Engine. Students will each get their own account on the StudentTECH course site where they can upload and share their games and animations with others. Students will be provided with all source files used in this workshop, too!  Course open to middle and high school students.

Photography + Photoshop = Fun!
Friday, July 23, 2010 - 8:30am - 3:00pm
In this fun, exciting hands-on workshop, students will learn basic camera functions to make eye catching photos and then take them to a new level in Photoshop, with the use of special techniques. Though we will learn about interesting technical tools, this class is ant art photography class and will focus on the creating powerful self portraits, portraits, or images based on your dreams . Experimentation, in any form, is encouraged. This course requires the use of a DSLR. A digital Point-and-Shoot camera is also acceptable. Please be familiar with the use of your camera. You will also need a USB thumb drive, which allows you to save any assignments in progress (or completed) during the class.  Course open to middle and high school students.

Introduction to Maya and 3D Modeling
Monday- Friday, August 9 - 13, 2010 – 8:30am - 3:00pm
This course will provide an introduction to using Maya to create computer animations. Students will be given a comprehensive introduction to the various components of the Maya software package; including Modeling, Animation, Rendering, and Lighting.
Topics to be covered:

• Brief history of Computer Graphics
• Maya Program interface and workflow philosophy
• Dependency Graph
• Nodes and attributes
• Modeling tools and foundation workflows
• Animation tools
• Principles and workflows
• Shading and texturing foundations
• Lighting and rendering
• Dynamics and particles

For questions or additional information, please contact Ange Mason at 858 534-5064 or amason@ucsd.edu