Christmas Cards in Scratch

I am a big fan of creative activities in the last week of term… a chance to do different things and often with a holiday season twist. Many times I given students the option of making Christmas Cards for loved ones, so this year it has been animated Christmas Cards coded in Scratch. Instead of scissior skills they were learning how to create their own sprites. For music we went to Jamendo to find music that we could use under a Creative Commons Lisence then to add different elements we searched through the online Scratch Community to find some Sprites that we could remix. In short, just a fantastic way to celebrate Coding and the end of the school year.

PS… we chose Christmas, but could have been for any holiday that you wanted to celebrate 🙂

…and thanks to Mark Bodino on Jamendo and Howard Abrams on Scratch for their inspiration and sharing of Digital Content.

https://scratch.mit.edu/users/howardabrams/
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/15985958/#player
https://www.jamendo.com/artist/502233/mark-bodino

//scratch.mit.edu/projects/embed/192779067/?autostart=false

Scratching for the Stars

I sometimes forget how truly amazing the student’s brain is and today I was reminded and still can not stop smiling. Now this was not just a single child, but did start from a single question, and it involved 2 classes of 7 year old students.

We are working on Scratch games. Racing games. There is a track, there is a sprite and there is a finish line. If you go off the track you go back to the start and if you get to the end you might celebrate with a ‘Boyakasha’ then change the colour by 25 or pixelate and then go around again.

The games were pretty amazing and all the students had designed their own race car sprites and tracks. At the start of the second lesson  we were looking at completing the finer details, debugging a few errors and filling out the Project Page information – yuo know, tying up the loose ends of a unit before Christmas Holidays interrupt.

A hand was raised… “How do you add the score?”

I hesitated. These are 7 year olds. I do not teach creating variables to 7 year olds…

…but I showed him and we created a Data Variable for score. Before I knew it they were changing code scripts to Change score by 1 when you crossed the finish line. Someone called out -1 score if you go off the track and the score was going up and down. Like most children they wanted to get the highest score and then when one child had a score of 9999 questions were raised….

“You’re Cheating!!!”
“Wow, you are good.”
“That’s Hacking!!!”
“What’s Hacking?!?”
and
“How did you do that?”

The skills developed at an alarming rate and the questions kept on flying around the class. Soon students realised that a score that could go on forever was pointless and not rewarding in any way. The student who raised the initial question put together a block of code stating ‘If SCORE=5 then Finish all” and a friend added “If Score=-5 then Finish All“.

By the end of the lessson the script was quite long and we had added you win and lose screens. I had no idea at the start of the lesson that it would end up going so far, but I am so glad it did. It would have been easy to gloss over the question, but I learned so much from following through with it, the students went through the Pit of Learning and came out the other side with a smile and a sense of achievement…. I know that I will sleep well tonight.

//scratch.mit.edu/projects/embed/186790029/?autostart=false

Screen Record on an iPad

A few new features are now on iOS devices thanks to iOS 11 and finally the one thing that has always annoyed me about an iPad has been sorted – the ability to screen record. Previously you would need to mirror your iPad, but now in the Control Center you just tap an icon and the screen recording begins – interestingly it records the sounds off the iPad, such as key clicks and app sounds, but does not record any background sounds.

An extra I also discovered by accident, is when you screen shot of your device you have the ability to annotate the screen shot (very cool).

So, now that I am able to screen record directly on an iPad I was able to make my first iPad only App Tutorial and based it on an App that I am still learning how to use to its full potential and wondering if it is worth showing kids Scratch Jr or just moving them into Scratch as we do at the moment (Years 1-6 all use Scratch to some level).

The process was extremely simple and makes me wonder if the days where I no longer need a computer are getting closer. A quick intro made with Intromate, add the screen record video, then narrate on iMovie and upload to YouTube. The world we live in really is a wondrous place.

Micro:Bit – Tinkering with a Micro Processor

The Micro:Bit is a very interesting microprocessor that was gifted to all Year & students in the UK in 2016 – it is said that many were given and never turned on as there were rafts of teachers and students who did not have the time, curiosity or ability to get them working.

The BBC Micro:Bit

I had a short play with one at the FOBIT conference in Singapore earlier in the year and have wanted to explore the device further ever since. After picking one up for $15us on Ebay I have been reading, testing, exploring, playing and tinkering and I only wish that I had a whole class set. The resources are there, they are able to be coded in many different ways (my favourite is JavaScript Blocks Editor, which is Scratch like in design and presentation) and the STEAM applications are immense.

image from BBC Micro:Bit website

The Technology Will Save Us Blog offers a Lego Challenge and by adding a few bricks I had a device that at the turn of a dial told me the temperature in the room.

Through nesting a few loops I was able to turn my Micro:Bit into a Magic 8 Ball (well Magic 6 Ball) that when shaken provided one of 6 random messages to be displayed across the 5X5 LED screen.

Lastly, it may have been a bit messy and fiddly, but I was able to download the iOS app to my iPhone, Bluetooth pair it with my Micro:Bit and then send the code I had written through the airwaves to make the device work in a way that I wanted.

In short… Micro:Bit – Cool, easy to use, I want more for my classroom and so much scope to be used from beginner to advanced level.

Really getting into Coding with Scratch

It has been too long since I have written here (there are dozens of unfinished posts over the past 3 years, but few published). I am now in Vietnam and teaching ICT, rather than a classroom teacher, and it has been a whirlwind of difference. It is a much bigger school, but as I teach most of the students I get to know them all and it allows me to be the kind of teacher that I normally am.

Big change as been, other than having access to Google again, the amount of coding that I teach using Scratch and it can be upwards of 15 hours a week. I feel that I now dream in Blockly and ‘if then’ or ‘forever’ loops. It is like being immersed in a language and it has increased my knowledge beyond all belief.

Year 1 through 3 are using the offline editor and are learning to make instruments play a tune or making balls bounce around the screen and play a recorded sound when they collide. Year 4-6 are making playable video games and now beginning to realise that they are able to create games in their own time (such as the final game).

Scratch has recently introduced Educator Accounts, for which you need to apply and get approval (a day to wait), but this now allows you to manage multiple online classes, reset their forgotten passwords, add or remove students and sign them up without the need for email addresses to login – such a time s
aver and it may help me keep my hair a few more years.

There are scores of resources out there, any question that you have is answered by a forum post or YouTube tutorial and once you give it a go your students will love it. I know that when they get to Secondary they will be problem solvers, better at logic and reasoning and have a good understanding about how code is laid out and how to change variables and create loops and conditionals.

My first successful game (Even though it has a glitch or too)

//scratch.mit.edu/projects/embed/140541688/?autostart=false

This game was created by a student as part of his International Week homework to teach visiting year 2 and 3 students about Ecuador in a fun way.

//scratch.mit.edu/projects/embed/136647435/?autostart=false

HTML Basics – My first step to Coding

45 minutes of Tutorials on Code Academy and I created my first website in Code… Wow, it was fun, frustrating and challenging and I want to know more.

This was what the code looked like. I added it to the Text option of this post and there it is!

Luke’s Test Website

Luke’s Test Website

Who Am I?

I am a teacher of 11 years experience who is trying to learn about code and coding so that I am able to try to use it within my classroom or special projects like 20% time.

My Learning this year

I have begun a personal learning journey that is making me try new things. The first step was Twitter and the second step was my professional blog. Now I am trying to learn about coding
Click here to visit me on twitter

Hopefully the image will link through to my blog and hopefully this will work when I click submit!

Cargobot App – Angry Birds crossed with Code Academy

Cargo Bot App – Click to be taken to App Store.

I may be late with picking up on this, but I have just discovered Cargobot – the first App to be created on an iPad  using the Codea App and it is just too awesome. Learning coding is on my ‘To-Do’ list for the next academic year and am researching into Code Academy at the moment as a starting point.  With Cargobot you are introducing the concepts of Coding and I know that any student that I have ever taught would love the challenges that Cargobot offers.

Drew Minock and Brad Waid, the two guys who introduced me to this App,  mentioned in a webcast from #ISTE13 how they had their students using this app in class and at home when one of the students was told that they had created a new ‘Best Solution’ for the level and was asked to please record then upload to YouTube – how cool is that! Just imagine how inspired  that child have been to know that at Grade 4 they have achieved what no one else, no even the App developer, had achieved before?

Now add it to your classroom environment and you are onto a winner. The game is all about  Logic and reasoning skills, trial and error, working through a problem and persistence – skills that every teacher is trying to foster in the 21st Century learner.  When you attempt the problem you can see how many moves it takes to reach the best solution and when you reach a solution you are given a star rating out of 3 just like Angry Birds-  a 1 star or 2 star solution means your solution is OK or  your solution is good, but could be done better.  To me that becomes a second challenge and makes me want to do better – I will persist until I get those 3 stars that have eluded me.

Maybe add it as a homework challenge? In those paperless classes with 1:1 iPads it would be perfect, as all you need to do is set a level, get the kids to work on it and then record their best solution and upload it to their blog or digital portfolio through YouTube like my 2 start solution below.  The next day in class you could get into groups and discuss each others solutions, possible problems, ways to improve solutions and then rework the solution.

Further Readings

Cargo-Bot, An Addictive iPad Game That Teaches Programming Concepts

Cult of Mac – Cargo-Bot is the World’s First Game to be made entirely on the iPad

Two Guy’s & Some iPads – EdReach Presents talk from ISTE 2013

Codea App