Learning MaChines Summer CamP

What This Is

Learning Machines is a three-session creative AI workshop where participants explore how generative AI systems create text, images, and video. Each session combines unplugged activities, real AI tools, structured prompt experiments, evidence documentation, and reflection.

The camp is not a prompt engineering tutorial. It is an investigation. The repeated question across all three sessions is: what is the machine actually doing, and what does the human contribute?

Generative AI is not just a tool that gives answers. It is a system for patterns — in data, in culture, in language, in images, and in our own expectations.

Summer Learning Machines Camp Dates:

(9 am to 11 am PT / 12 pm to 2 pm ET -7 UTC)

Saturday, July 11

Saturday, July 18

Saturday, July 25

Interest form - Please fill out by Saturday, July 4:

Interest Form

Ethics, Consent, and Participation Choices

AI use is optional, visible, and discussable. Participants will be able to use tools directly, analyze examples provided by the facilitator, design classroom activities, build non-generative explainers, or choose low-AI / no-AI participation pathways.

Ethical questions around creator rights, data practices, privacy, bias, attribution, environmental impact, and classroom responsibility will be treated as part of the camp rather than an add-on.

Opting out of direct AI tool use should not mean opting out of the camp.

The full policy on recordings, screenshots, participant naming, AI-generated notes, public sharing, and corrections is documented in the Consent and Recap Protocol in the repo.

Who This Is For

The primary audience is the same CC Fest community: educators, artists, creative technologists, and curious learners. No coding or machine learning background required. Familiarity with p5.js from Coding Camp is a bonus but not a prerequisite, the tools do the heavy lifting.

Participants who completed CC Fest Coding Camp will find a natural next step here: the same community, the same facilitation style, the same emphasis on making and reflecting, but applied to a different set of questions.

For more details about the camp and planning details visit my Notion repo.

Coding Camp will be back in Fall 2026. In the meantime you can read about the previous camps in Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026