Winter Mini Courses Focus on Creativity at Roycemore

After the successful launch of new online Summer Camp courses earlier this year, Roycemore School has decided to keep the fun going with weekend/evening mini courses starting in January. Families wondering how to keep kids engaged during the winter months will be happy to learn that four virtual options will be available this winter for students in 4th through 12th grades. These options are open to Roycemore students as well as students enrolled at other schools. Courses will help students hone their creative and critical thinking skills, while also providing an additional academic challenge. Topics will include Stories on Stage, Stop Motion Video, Adobe Surreal Compositing, and Wearable Technology. Students will advance their design, writing, and presentation skills without the pressure of a final grade.

The Stories on Stage mini course will focus on how students can develop their own unique style of storytelling with the help of curriculum developed from the very popular non-profit storytelling organization, The Moth (themoth.org). The Moth focuses on aural storytelling via live and virtual shows, as well as radio segments and podcasts. Lizanne Wilson, Roycemore teacher heading up this Mini Course, describes why students love the course: “We are all storytellers. Once they are introduced to the tools for crafting their stories, I find I have to get out of their way as the stories begin to tumble out. What I hear from the students is that their favorite part of the class is listening to each other tell stories because the stories are amazing.” This curriculum will help Middle and Upper School students learn how to tell their own stories with confidence, a critical skill for effective leadership in academic, personal, and professional settings. At the end of the six-week session, students will record their final stories for an online storytelling celebration.

Roycemore is also offering two mini courses featuring products from the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. One of the courses is designed for 4th through 8th grade students to learn how to tell their own stories through stop motion video, and the other Adobe course is for 5th through 9th graders interested in fusing pictures together in Photoshop to create fantastical imagery. Both classes leverage Roycemore’s collaboration with Adobe Inc. which provides a unique opportunity for students to become proficient with the Adobe software that is widely used across industries today. Students will also receive one-year student access to the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite for free, making these mini courses an especially great value.

For the final course option, Wearable Technology, there will be two sessions -- one for Middle School and one for Upper School. Developed in collaboration with Dr. John Rogers at Northwestern University, a pioneer in wearable technology, this course will provide students with the opportunity to learn about the feedback we receive from our own bodies. (Quote from Dr. Dudek) Students will investigate their physiology, collect data by wearing state-of-the-art sweat patches, and then analyze this data to learn about the unique ways their bodies work. Sweat is often ignored in health monitoring, but in reality it contains a wealth of important information! This course is great for students interested in engineering or biology.

Want more information about these unique and creative mini courses? Find out more at www.roycemore.org/minicourses.