The New Year has Begun

My last story to share is that the new year of our design club has kicked off. I have six new, creative minds ready to sink their teeth into the Little Big Planet franchise. The group began last Friday. As we did last school year, I am letting them start out by playing the games to really see the types of things they can do if they want to. It is always fun to watch them get in and enjoy the different aspect of the LBP2 and Karting.

I learned a lot working with the kids last year, and I am excited about this year’s group. I have some fun ideas about having the students contribute to the blog and, time permitting, do a team create competition where other students in our school judge the finished products. One step at a time though.

Love this picture. Our group meets on Fridays this year.

Also, I have a fifty dollar commitment from a backer to help get the group a PS Vita and several who have already given. Thank you to all who have helped so far. This will put our group exactly $66 away from adding that to our repertoire of hardware and open up new possibilities.

If you can help with that, please go to this link at donorschoose.org.

What does Awesome Sauce taste like?

My second bit of news is a little late, but it has been a busy first 9 weeks of school. I want to thank both the Little Big Planet community and more specifically our awesome Community Manager, Steven, for granting to me one of Little Big Planet’s highest honors. At the beginning of the school year I received the Awesomesauce pin. That is digital metal that distinguishes your work in Little Big Planet as valuable and important. When my wife, Kathleen, asked why this was such a big deal I explained it like this. This game has been played by around 4 million people or so. According to the Little Big Planet wiki, I was the 13^th person to receive the pin. So, yeah, it is really cool.

Thank you all for your support, we are not done yet though, more on that tomorrow.

Helping to Give Extra Life

I will be posting three very exciting bits of news over the next three days.  First, I am excited to announce that on November 1, 2013, our school will be holding an Extra Life event. If you do not know, Extra Life is a yearly fund raiser run by the Children’s Miracle Network to raise money for local hospitals and join the fight against cancer among kids. Normally the marathon is a 25 hour one, but what we are doing is five hours on five systems for students in grade five (get it?). This way we meet the 25 hour requirement. Student and some of our teachers will be playing from 3 pm until 8 pm. We are planning to play lots of cooperative and multiplayer games and even hold a couple tournaments. Our goal is to raise $100, and over half of our fifth grade is participating.

If you read this and feel moved to donate feel free to join our cause at my Extra Life page or go to Extra-Life.org and search for Adam Renard in the upper right corner. You can expect a huge write up about the event that weekend.

Very exciting stuff, and more tomorrow.