February 25 and 27, 2014 - Days Eleven and Twelve

These last days, students may choose to work on their Programming 101 lessons in Tynker or practice coding the robots. Remember that the Tynker lessons we used during coding were purchased for each participant, and students will have access to these after coding classes are over. They can be completed at any time, and students may continue building new projects at their leisure.

I have really enjoyed teaching this class. Our group was very creative and stayed engaged in all of the activities. Thank you very much for sharing your children with me for these twelve sessions!

~Pam Lewis~

February 20, 2014 - Day Ten

Students worked solely on their Programming 101 lessons in Tynker today. McKenzie asked me to add everyone's projects to the "showcase" so that every child can see everyone else's projects in our class. When logged in, click Courses at the top of the screen, and then click the button that says, "View Showcase."

February 18, 2014 - Day Nine

Students learned to use procedures with the robots today. Procedures are programs that are saved for later use. They can be integrated into other programs to make really big, complex programs. For instance, you could save a procedure that draws a leaf, another procedure that draws a petal, and a third procedure that draws a stem. The main program could then call all of these secondary programs to create a flower.

There are 32 open "slots" for users to create and save their own procedures. There are an additional five slots for users to program the special sensors on the robot. These sensors include the front bumper, back bumper, sound sensor, and sensors that detect the presence or absence of light. An example of how the sensors might be used is that the robot could be programmed so that if the front bumper hits something, the robot might honk its horn, back up, and turn completely around. Or perhaps, its headlights come on when the lights are turned off in the room.

Students learned how to create, save, and call procedures by inputting commands that were given to them on the interactive whiteboard. They executed the main program to see the outcome. One of the shapes turned out to be a simple flower, and the second was a much more complex flower.

Some students then chose to see what they could create with procedures, while others continued their Programming 101 lessons in Tynker.

February 13, 2014 - Day Eight

For the benefit of a few of our friends who missed last Thursday because of the talent show, today we reviewed how to program the robot to draw equilateral polygons. The hardest part is determining the number that goes after the "turn right" or "turn left" command. That number represents the angle at which the robot should turn. To find this, divide 360 by the number of sides of the shape you wish to draw. To determine the interior angle of the shape (not needed for the program), subtract the angle the robot should turn from 180.

Students were asked to program their robot to draw any two shapes from the chart (5 sides or greater). Once complete, they either continued experimenting with their robot or worked on their Programming 101 lessons in Tynker. Next week, students will learn how to program and integrate "procedures," and how to use special commands that control sounds and lights.

February 11, 2014 - Day Seven

The fourth graders have just finished a math unit in their regular classroom in which they learned to plot XY coordinates on a grid. We have a mix of third and fourth graders in our Introduction to Coding class, so I introduced this concept to third grade while reviewing with fourth grade. Then I gave everyone an XY coordinate grid with six points plotted in various locations. Students also got a robot and a pack of brush pens.

Their tasks were as follows:

1. Next to each letter, A-F, write the coordinate of each point (crawl before you climb = X,Y). 
2. Compose a program to move the robot from point A to point B, following straight lines only (no diagonals), and execute the program to make the robot draw the path.
3. Near the starting point (A), write the program you used. 
4. Near the program you wrote, write which way the robot was facing when you started. 
5. Follow the same instructions for point B to point C, point C to point D, etc. 
6. When you have finished, circle any intersecting lines and write their coordinates next to the circle.

The grids were printed on 11x17" paper, so students were confined to a much smaller workspace than the butcher paper that we used last week. Each block on the grid represented a four centimeter square. The total number of centimeters that the robot needed to move had to be included in the program.

There were a variety of different routes the robot could take to make it from one point to another, so some groups wound up with more intersecting lines than others. Sky was determined NOT to have any intersecting lines. She noticed that her more complex routes were starting to look like a dinosaur. She chose to use the remaining minutes of class programming the robot to finish her dinosaur. How creative! I wish I had a picture of the final product, but I did get this picture of it (below) in progress. She even added teeth. You'll notice that the robot didn't draw exactly on the bottom grid line. Sometimes the robot gets stuck a little when it is on the edge of the paper. The program was not flawed.

Students are also continuing with their Programming 101 lessons in Tynker. Some students are working on creating their own programs. McKenzie is working on a Magic 8 Ball.To date, these nine students have created 83 Tynker projects!

February 6, 2014 - Day Six

Our robots have arrived! w00t!

The robots have a hole in the middle for a special brush pen, so that a trail can be left behind as the robot moves. This can be useful to verify the output of a program and determine whether it needs to be debugged or not.

In addition to moving forward, backward, and turning right or left, programs can include specific distances (in centimeters) and angles at which to turn. In order to draw a regular polygon with all sides and angles equal, the user must determine the angle at which the robot should turn. Students were told they should divide 360 by the number of sides of the shape they wish to draw. To draw a simple triangle, the robot would turn 120 degrees. Thus, the command to draw a triangle with three centimeter sides would look like this:

The number three in the above command represents the number of times the commands following it should repeat. The output displayed on the robot's screen actually looks like this:

The above command conforms better to the Logo language specification. The reason for the difference is so the user won't have to push as many keys to make the program. The opening bracket is included on the same key as the Repeat.

Students can determine the interior angles of a regular polygon by subtracting the angle at which the robot should turn from 180.

Students were given a few short commands to program into their robot. With a pen inserted into the robot, they executed the command on butcher paper to view the output.

Students tried to program the robot to draw an octagon, and then determine the interior angles of the octagon. Charlie was the first one to do this, so I challenged him to create a dodecagon. He did it!

I think they might have had fun with the robots.

February 4 - Day Five

We continued working with LOGO commands today. Given simple programs, students drew the predicted output on a grid, and given specific shapes, the students had to write the program that would draw that shape. Students also simplified programs by including a repeat.

Sky wanted to check her work on the regular whiteboard before she declared her program complete. Awesome!