New term -6&7s

Last term I was very impressed by the years 3-5 efforts in Scratch with one student able to  to talk to an Arduino. This term the yeas 6&7s have blow me away with both their enthusiasum and their ability to quickly learn the basics of Scratch.  At least 2 students have moved straight onto programming Arduinos.  We are using a computer club book to keep track of each weeks tasks and what each student has completed.  This will help me as well as the students look back and see how much they have learnt.  It also keeps a record of the tricks they have learnt to solve complex problems.  Please ensure you work at this a little bit each week to develop your skills.

This week's task which I pasted into the Student Journal is to create the game of PONG.  The assignement is:

1. Cretae a ball (centered) and 2 blocks on the left and right  to use as bats (example shown)
2. Start the ball moving left to right when the space bar is pressed. If the ball does not hit your block, then the ball is lost off screen. Move left block up/down using [Q,Z] keys,move right bat up/down using [up arrow, down arrow].

Extra things to do:

1. Add a score – you get a point in the other player misses
2. stop the blocks (bats) moving off then screen when moving up and down.
3. Add a random angle to the ball after it hits the bat to add difficulty to the game
4. When the ball strikes the bat, make sound “pop” and return the ball (like tennis).
5. Change service (ball goes in the other direction when space bar is hit) if you loose (miss the ball)

Monday 26th (4th Meeting)

This week we discussed how to turn the sprite around in Scratch.  To achieve this we need an understanding of the concepts of how a circle can be broken into 360-degrees - think of how a clock is divided into twelve and that after we rotate once, we are back at 12 again.  If we breake the cricle into 360 small sections we call each of these sections degrees (see the image).

If we want to go right we need to point in the direction of +90.  If we want to go up we need to point in the direction 0 (or 360).  More importantly, if we want to point in a direction say between up-and-right (on a compass called NE) we would point in the direction of 45 degrees.  We can use any angles of degrees to point in any  direction we choose. 


This week we also said that we would see some students Scratch programs at the next meeting (on the 9th June).  So if you have not got an account yet, best talk to your parents about setting one up so you can practice and save your projects.

Monday 19th May (3rd Meeting)

This Monday we discussed how we can use the backdrop "XY GRID" in scratch (see image) to help understand how to move a character around
the screen using either the "goto" or "glide" blocks.  We discussed that moving requires use to use a number-line. The center of the screen is zero and moving to the right of the center uses positive numbers - we call this axis the X-axis.  To move to the left, we extend the concept of the number line to negative (minus) numbers, so that any negative numbers move the chaarcter to the left of the center.  We can further extend this concept in the up and down direction by rotating the number line in the up-down directions - postive number move us up, while negatve numbers move us down.  We call this the Y-axis.  This concept of a X annd Y axis (cartesian corodinates) is very powerful and is used not only for computer programing but for mathematics, engineering and geograpical sciences (for spaital analysis) .

Keep thinking about what kind of game or story you might create and try some programming to move your character around is a specific way.  Next week will will discuss how rotation works..

Building stories in Scratch (2nd Meeting -12 May)

12 May meeting.
Today we discussed what kind of game or project in Scratch we might make.  The idea is for students to create/storeyboard backdrops, characters, sounds and actions that might be used.  We can then look at how to achieve these goals in Scratch.  There is considerable breath in the skills of the students and lots for them to teach each other.

Some students have been using Scratch for some time and are very proficient at it.  For these student I will look at introducing the Arduino microcontroller and it's programming language (based on C).  For those really interested, follow the (windows) installation instructions for the Arduino here (if you haven't mastered Scratch yet I wouldn't try this yet).  Locally you can pick up an Ardiuino from Jaycar for ~AUD$40.  They are avaiable online (overseas) for around half this price - I will bring in some arduino boards (unos) next week for us to look at.

Keep programming :)

Update from 5th May (1st meeting)

Late update - last week (5th May) was our first official meeting.  It's clear many of the students have some advanced programming skills in Scratch and I'll be looking at some attactivities to push them.  The club is all about peer assistance, so as much as possible I'm trying to get the kids to learn from each other and share experiences.  I know some of the students want to show off what they have created, so I will fit in a time every 3 weeks or so for the best scratch project to be demonstrated to the club.  Hopefull this will allow everyone to understand each other's skills and to have ideas shared arround.  This week I'm hoping to discuss a concept each student can focus on, to make them ask "how do I do that in Scratch".  We'll try to discuss story boarding, backgrounds, characters and their abilitites.

I visted the first CoderDojo of the year at UWA this weekend.  This is a forum for teenagers to learn abotu programming (Scratch, HTML, Python).  I was happy to see that our format and the skills of some of our students are competitive with what's being done for students at the secondary school level.

For those at home: If you're following along with this blog and can't attend the club, think about a game you might want to make,  where is it set - draw out the setting on paper if you wish (you can later scan this image and upload to use as a background).  Think about you character - what do they do (shoot, hug, skip)... What sounds are made (bang, burp, meow) and what's the aim of the game ( get the aliens, find the easter eggs anything).  Once you have these ideas, we can think about what scratch can do to make it happen.  As much as possible we want to make our scenes,characters and sounds ourselves.  This is fun and avoids copyright issues - especially for those who are keen on "selling" their game:)

Great kickoff meeting today.  The kids were lining up at the door.  We discussed:

• What do you (the students) want to get out of this group ?
• What is a robot ?
• What is programming - example of scratch ?

I really appreciate the student's enthusiasm and the diversity of their interests

Over the break students are encouraged to try out the Scratch tutoral - Click the CREATE tab at the top and run through the 13 steps to your first program.  Please supervise your children whenever they go online.  Once the tutorialis completed, I suggest you sign up (Join Scatch button). You need to join Scratch to have any programs you create saved.  Joining requires a parent as the process required an email address.  When signing up 1) please do not use your last name as a user name 2) chose a password your child can remember.  If you have trouble remebering passwords, I suggest using a password manager such as KeePass (free).  All the tools I will use in this forum are open source applications, so they won't cost you anything but time.

Other points:

• This blogg is the first port of call for discemmination of information.  Please provide me with feedback.  This is my first blogg so I may miss some posts before I figure it out so stay with me.
• If I use words you don't understand, please let me know
• I suggest students use a bound note book for this group to keep all their notes in one place (especially once we start storey boarding)
• Programming required screen time - I suggest asking students to trade off existing screen time, that is, program instead of TV, gaming (phone, Tablet, console) or other.  I hate the idea of adding more screen time to our lives.  Scratch is also avaiable to run on a Tablet so consider programming in the park.  
• Some degree of just trying stuff out is required by stduents to understand what this programming thing is all about.  However, eventually, students should write out their concepts in a flow chart before sitting down to program [idea to self - spend a day on learning about flow charts]
• Please use only first names [never last names] in posting comments and do not identify the location  of the group

The next meeting with students will be the Monday 5th May (2nd week of term 2).

Possible syllabus

Here is a brief idea of some of the material I may cover.  This will largely be dictated by the skills and knowledge base of the group.  Material to cover may include:

• What is a robot ?
• Introduction to programming
• Scratch - Intro  
• Scratch -the 2D Number line (Cartesian coordinates)
• Scratch - loops
• Scratch - Events
• Scratch - Designing a Game - Story boarding to coding

For the older in the group:

• Introduction to controlling the world - The Arduino
• Intro to C & The Arduino
• Affect the world - blinking lights
• Sense the world - sensing an input
• Arduino - Designing code to turn on/off different lights
• Copying the world -3D design
• 3D printing - starting with 2D
• 2D slicing - create 3D art from 2D slices

For these who want to be pushed:

• How motors work - measuring speed and turning power (torque)
• Gears and how they work
• A basic robot - where motors and gears come in
• Talking to the Robot with an Arduino
• Talking to the Arduino with a Computer
• Putting it all together