Toying with Technology: Create with Code

Week 9
Coding Smart Objects
"Ollie" visits Rivendell Elementary Schools!
We were able to host a robot as part of the Vermont Robot Rodeo project. Ollie was part of our Samuel Morey and Westshire school communities for the month of February. First we used the Ollie app to drive Ollie and do some tricks on our ipads and and android devices. Then we started programming Ollie using the Tickle app on our ipads. We programmed Ollie to move in a square, then in a triangle, and also programmed Ollie to do some tricks. The highlight of Ollie's visit was to use Ollie in the Gym and try to follow some of the lines. Having lots of space to use Ollie allowed us to have Ollie move a little faster.

Week 7
Coding with Lily Pad

This turned out to be far more challenging than I had anticipated. I couldn't get my laptop and my new LilyPad development board to communicate. My Arduino board last week worked right away. I had assumed that the Lily Pad would be easy, not so... I toyed with the idea of setting it aside, but really wanted to play and create some wearables. I spent hours scanning through websites, but when it finally worked. I was so excited!

This quote from Seymour Papert's book Mindstorms really resonated with me this week: “Errors benefit us because they lead us to study what happened, to understand what went wrong, and through understanding, to fix it. Experience with computer programming leads children more effectively than any other activity to “believe in” debugging.”(p. 114)

Here is the code I have been playing with.

Week 6:
Coding with Arduino

This week I explored my Arduino Starter kit. There are lots of small electronic parts to explore. Initially I had no idea what do to with any of the parts. I also had to install the Arduino software. To my surprise it worked on the first try. YEAH!

I followed Lucie's tutorial and started connecting some of the wires and little LED bulbs to the Arduino UNO board and edited the blink script. I started with one little LED bulb and just kept connecting more LED bulbs.The coding is going to be a challenge, I never spent much time coding in C and it has been years since I coded in C. This week's code was pretty simple, it was fun to make my little bouquet of flowers blink.

/*modified 2/23/2016

by Gabi Martino

// Pin 5 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards.

// given name:

int led1 = 5;

int led2 = 10;

int led3 = 3;

int led4 = 7;

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board

void setup() {

// initialize digital pin ? as an output.

pinMode(led3, OUTPUT);

pinMode(led1, OUTPUT);

pinMode(led2, OUTPUT);

pinMode(led4, OUTPUT);

}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever

void loop() {

digitalWrite(led4, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)

delay(800); // wait for a second

digitalWrite(led3, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)

delay(800); // wait for a second

digitalWrite(led1, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)

delay(500); // wait for a second

digitalWrite(led2, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)

delay(1000); // wait for a second

digitalWrite(led4, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW

delay(800);

digitalWrite(led3, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW

delay(800); // wait for a second

digitalWrite(led1, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW

delay(500); // wait for a second

digitalWrite(led2, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW

delay(1000); // wait for a second

}

I am fascinated by the e-textiles and decided to play with some clothing. So I decided to purchase one of the Lilipad boards and explore. Can't wait for the materials to arrive so I can play.

Week 4:

Coding with Mobile Devices:

Over the past week I learned about several interesting Coding Apps. I explored quite a mobile apps. I shared the apps with small groups of students and asked them to evaluate the apps and give me feedback. Students were able to figure out the puzzle apps without much direction. The coding apps were a little more challenging.

Our favorites puzzle based apps were:

Bee Bot
Cargo Bot
Daisy the Dinosaur
Lightbot
Lightbot Jr
Kodable

I also explored several apps to create with code. Our favorites were:

Scratch Jr
Tickle

Common Sense Media publishes and evaluates many other coding resources on their

Cool Coding Apps and Websites for Kids page.

Week 3:

Exploring our new MakeyMakey

This week we explored our new Makey Makey and connected a variety of materials to the controller with the wires and alligator clips. Clementines and apples worked great. We also used foil, spoons, jewelry, paperclips, scissors, coins, pencils and other objects.

Makey Makeys are invention kits that turn almost any object into a touch pad and allows us to control computer keys by touching the objects.

The quick start guide was very helpful as we figured out how to connect the MakeyMakey. We had lots of fun exploring and working with our group.

Our next step is to create a game using SCRATCH and use the Makey Makey as controller.

Click here to access the Google CS First Hour of Code tutorial.

Week 2:
This week I explored Scratch - this was a new experience for me. I set up an account in Scratch was able to "join the club"and connect to CS-First Activities. I can see using this format with students - will have to figure out how to set up a club.

I worked through several of the CS-First Activities. I found the tutorials very helpful, but it took me quite a while to work my way through the tutorials. I had worked my way all the way through the Adventures at High Sea last night, but never saved - didn’t realize I had to save the project along the way - "saving" was not so obvious to me - but I learned...

It was a good learning experience, - I was able to follow the instructions much easier and it didn't take as long. I kept my story much simpler and shorter this time.

Click on the picture to check out my graphics

Today I made my first Gaming Story using Scratch!

Click on the image to check out my first Gaming Story

I created my first Computer Game in Scratch

To control player 1 use the up, right and left arrow keys
To change the costume of player 1, use the 1 key
To control player 2, use the A, S, D keys
To change the costume of player 2, use the 2 key
TO change the racetrack layout, click on the green button